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The Nightmare Macabre
They stood alone, upon a starlit hill, surrounded by battlements blown to pieces by the force of a climactic struggle. The flames of dying fires whipped like tattered banners in the wind. Around them lay corpses in bloodstained livery, bearing sigils of sun and moon. Far below, and out of sight, the final battle raged. A symphony of chaos, all clashing steel and raging bellows, carried to them through the night.
From across the killing field, the alicorns of light and dark stared at one another. The Nightmare Macabre sneered, imperiously leveling a hoof at her sibling.
"What sayeth thou, Celestia? How now?
The kingdom built on sunlight's golden kiss
Sees in the nightmare's cold abyss an end
To all the enterprise of ponykind.
Yet thou are not content to lay and die
In silv'ry fields, with moonlit jasmine choked.
By air and sea and land alike, you come,
By horn and hoof, a final stand you wage
And here, at last, upon the end of all
You come to treat with me, the Nightmare Queen.
What sayeth thou? what scheme, what toothy lie?
Speak quickly now, or keep thy peace and die."
Celestia met her sister's haughtiness with warmth and compassion. She stepped forward, her voice pleading, her eyes wide and dewey.
"'Tis not as sov'reign that I come to thee
But as thy flesh and blood, thy trueborn kin.
No terms of peace, no treaty can be writ
Which can equate in any mean amount
The love I bear thee deep within my heart.
Pray! oh, sister, oh fallen Nightmare fair!
To Canterlot, let us remove, and there
We shall together set aright the spheres
And mend the bloody gap within our realm
For which love, alone, can make recompense.
Let sun and moon in harmony abide,
And let this nightmare, at long last, subside."
But Nightmare Moon threw back her head, and laughed, as thunder crashed and lightning split the sky.
"Thy words are hollow, and thy fate is sealed!"
Her hoof dug into the ground; she grinned.
"Lay on! By horn and hoof shall come thy end.
Let carrion thy bones and flesh attend."
Celestia bowed her head and shut her eyes, and let a single tear of regret slip down her regal face. When it passed, she lifted herself, and unfurled her wings, a golden light beneath her hooves. Her words struck like hot iron.
"It is not horn and hoof, but harmony
That will Equestria deliver. Hark!"
Six points of light appeared around Celestia – red and blue, yellow and pink, green and violet. Nightmare Moon's eyes widened, and she roared a defiant challenge as those six lights coalesced into a white-hot ball of light. A rainbow wave streaked toward the the Nightmare Macabre, and swept her away, carrying her far into the night's sky.
Like an oil stain, the face of a mare spread across the moon.
Fingers of gold crept across the sky, driving away the velvety purple of the night. The moon descended below the horizon, and the sun rose to take its place. Behind Celestia, a column of blood-spattered ponies stampeded up the hill, and she turned to greet them. Their captain doffed her greathelm, and smiled proudly at her soldiers.
"See now, ponies, the morning's golden rays?
The nightmare moon is fell'd. We've won the day!"
She bowed, and her soldiers bowed with her, and sang their savior's praises.
"Hail, hail, Celestia, the sun-kissed queen!"
But Celestia drew her captain up, and shook her head soberly.
"'Tis not a time for merriment or cheer,
But for mourning. I am no queen, my friends,
And conquest not a thing to celebrate.
For though we have the day reclaimed and saved,
The blood we shed may not be washed away,
Nor can what I have wrought be now undone.
My sister's soul, I sought to save. Alas!
I have condemned her to oblivion,
And in so doing have myself been damn'd.
My heart is rent asunder, and you would name
This pain, this gaping wound, a victory?"
Unshed tears glimmered in the morning's glow.
"What sweetest suffering must defeat be."
The victorious princess, and her loyal guard, stood among the detritus of a climactic final battle that no mortal could now recall, the hard-won light of a brand new day shining to the east.
And the world exploded into applause, whistles and stomps and cheers that rang across the cavernous Manehattan stagehouse. One could get drunk on that kind of adoration, and Pomade Well felt vaguely tipsy. It almost made emerging from the illusion worth it.
He opened his eyes with a sigh, returning to a world of ropes and velvet curtains, wooden boards and brick walls and the ever-present theater tang of sweat and make-up. He'd seen The Nightmare Macabre, his own production and those of others, enough times to know that it would never match what he saw in his mind's eye. He'd done his best to recreate it, of course, and he'd done as good a job as anypony. Still, the most he could boast is that the voices, the performances, met and surpassed what he heard in his head when he read the play to himself. And so he made it his nightly ritual to slip away and shut his eyes at the climax, and let his actresses bear him away in his imagination.
Now, though, it was time for another ritual.
Pomade trotted to the wings, offstage right, and stared out at the cast assembled at the front of the stage. They bowed, as one, the Princesses in the middle of their line, and parted to make way for him. They beckoned him, and he sauntered onto the stage, grinning and running a hoof in his slicked-back mane.
The Princesses stood aside for him, and they linked their forelegs together; the crowd in the theater house stood for him, their whistles and cheers crescendoing. On either side, a chain of ponies stretched, a dozen and a half speaking parts.
Pomade gazed across the crowd, at his adoring public. All were standing, all were cheering.
Except for one.
A unicorn sat in the very back of the house, with a silvery-blue mane and a coat just a shade or two darker, over which she wore a black mourner's dress that hid most of her body in lace. She had to be large, larger than the average mare, to be seen over the burly stallion in front of her. Even her horn was massive, as long as his leg from hoof to knee, Pomade guessed.
She met his eyes, and scowled, the stage lights glinting off of her green-ringed eyes.
Pomade's elation tasted like ashes in his mouth as he bowed.
"...I don't think the audience noticed, personally, but when Batsy flubbed her line, I wanted to strangle her. We drilled that a hundred thousand times, and she still couldn't get the timing right!" 'Nightmare Moon' scoffed as she trotted down the hotel corridor with Pomade, the plush carpet beneath them muffling her hoofbeats.
"Hm," said Pomade.
"I mean, the audience certainly didn't catch it, but I did. You did too, right?" she continued. "In act three, scene two? The 'chop her into messes' speech?"
"Hm." He actually had zero idea what she was talking about. Agreeing, or making vauge noises that could be construed as agreeing, was just something he'd learned to do when mares were talking and he couldn't be bothered to listen.
He felt a thump against his hip – his companion's flank bumping against his own – and turned to regard her. Sure, she was out of costume now – no silver regalia or pleather wings, and her natural, chestnut curls framed her face instead of the starry blue wig. But the black dye in her coat and the make-up on her horn, though temporary, didn't come out as easily, and she drew the occasional stare from the hotel's guests and staff as she moved about the place. The look of concern she was giving him now was utterly ill-suited to Nightmare Moon.
"Sorry, Bloom," said Pomade with a half-smile. "Guess my mind's just elsewhere right now."
Blooming Garland sidled closer to him, dropping her voice. "Pom, what's the matter? You've been acting weird ever since the curtain call. Even your notes had less Applewood narcissism in 'em than usual."
Pomade looked away, chewing his lip. "Did you see that unicorn mare in the back of the house? The blue one, with the long horn?"
"I didn't. I was more preoccupied with blowing kisses to that journalist from the Manehattan Bugle." She nudged him again, harder. "Should I be jealous?"
He had to smirk at that. "No, no, it's not like that. She just – she didn't applaud, that's all."
Blooming Garland snorted. "Oh, is that all? Here I was worried it was something serious."
Pomade whipped his head around to look at her, stricken. "Bloom!"
"Oh, come now, Pom. I knew you were thin-skinned, but to fixate on the one mare in a packed house who wasn't giving you a standing ovation?" She shook her head, sighing.
Pomade flushed. "You could at least pretend to take me seriously."
They came to a stop by her suite, and she stepped in front of him to take his face between her hooves. "The show's a hit, Pomade. It's always been a hit. In the grand scheme of things, what does it matter if one pony out of hundreds didn't stomp her hooves for you?"
"...Mm." Pomade smiled tightly, and nodded. "Sure."
"What was that?" said Bloom, tilting her head and leaning closer. "That still didn't sound like you."
"I said 'if you're feeling so good about the play, then perhaps we ought to celebrate a little.'" His smile grew more relaxed, more natural.
"Knew you were in there somewhere." She pressed her forehead against his, mindful not to tap him with the point of her horn. "Sorry, but I'm gonna scrub this foul dye out of my coat, and sleep for the next eighteen hours – and no, before you ask, I am not looking for company in either endeavor."
"Mm... shame."
Bloom pulled away, and pecked him on the tip of his nose. "Perhaps tomorrow night."
Pomade leered at her. "Or tomorrow morning?"
"Bring champagne and orange juice, and we'll see. I'll need at least three mimosas in my system to stomach your touch that early." With a smoky look, she magically unlatched her door and backed inside. Then, turning, she looped her tail around the knob, and shut the door with a swing of her hips.
Pomade grinned the rest of the way to his room, thinking to himself what a lucky stallion he was.
...In most respects, he amended, when he recalled the empty bed awaiting him.
With a snap, and a hum of electricity, the spotlight switched on, shining in Pomade's face. He recoiled instinctively, raising a hoof to shield his eyes. The house beyond was pitch black – or maybe the light was just too bright for him to see anything past it – but he could hear the murmurs and whispers of the crowd. And he knew that they could see him.
"Psst!"
Pomade looked to his left. Princess Celestia was seated in a director's chair in the wings, wearing a scarf and beret, drinking a mimosa from a long-stemmed glass. Next to was Blooming Garland, in costume as Nighmare Moon, yet colored naturally underneath her armor.
"Read," Celestia mouthed, gesturing emphatically.
Pomade gulped and looked at his hooves – the script was open to a scene halfway through, one he hadn't rehearsed, hadn't even read, and now, couldn't read. The words on the page were gibberish, random squiggles and doodles of suns and moons, and coffee cups and traffic cones.
Gulping, and sweating in the spotlight's heat, he looked at Celestia. "I can't," he whispered hoarsely. "I don't know how."
The murmurs in the crowd grew restless. Bloom looked cooly at them from the corner of her eye, and itched with a hind hoof at the plate encasing her neck.
"Wrong page," Celestia mouthed. She pantomimed flipping a piece of paper open. The curtains beside them shimmered and waved with a musical chime.
Bloom leaned over and stuck her tongue into the mimosa, lapping it into her mouth.
Pomade did as he was told, and flipped the page open, only slightly mollified by what he saw. He still didn't know what play they were doing, but the photorealistic elephant at least offered some direction.
So Pomade drew himself up, and took a long, deep breath.
"BWAROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!"
Immediately, the audience laughed and cheered, hooves pounding the seats and the boards with delight. Pomade's chest swelled with courage. Rearing onto his back legs and spreading his forelegs, he repeated himself, twice as long and loud.
"BWAROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!"
The applause grew rapturous. Ponies whistled, and cheered, and called out his name; hotel keys and roses were flung onto the stage in front of him. Pomade, grinning, turned to look at Celestia and Bloom.
They were nowhere to be found. In their place was a unicorn, with a silvery blue mane, and a horn half as long as Pomade's leg. Where her eyes should have been, there were only vacant pits.
The eyeless mare scowled at him.
Pomade felt his hind legs quake, and he fell to all fours, dropping his script as he did. Cursing himself, he tried to search for it, as the audience's cheering melted into irritated, unsatisfied mutterings.
"Bwaroom?" Pomade ventured in a squeaky, uncertain voice.
His response was a lone, derisive snort, though there were still some scattered laughs.
"Bwaroom!" he repeated, gamboling forward frantically. The audience's laughter grew mocking, from giggles to jeers.
Pomade took one last, desperate breath.
"HAWWWWWWW. Hee-HAWWWWWWWWW."
Insults and epithets joined the jeers, as the audience's mockery reached a fever pitch. Pomade ducked as rotten fruit pelted the stage, exploding upon the boards, and smothering the tokens of favor from before.
He whirled to glare at the eyeless mare. "This is your fault! They loved me until you came along!"
The eyeless mare laughed silently without breaking her scowl, and shook her head. Rising, she turned away, and trotted into the wings behind her, the curtains enveloping her, making her vanish.
Pomade tried to gallop after her, but slipped on a banana, to the crowd's mocking delight. He fell, face-first, and kept on falling through the boards. The jeers of the audience grew distant, muted, as he tumbled end over end through an endless sea of stars. The curtains kept pace with him all the while, rustling with some unfelt breeze, even when the boards were gone and the spotlight was nothing but a pinprick of light among a thousand thousand more just like it.
Pomade, curious, looked upstage, between the curtains. Teal eyes, larger than his whole body, gazed back at him.
Pomade screamed and covered his face. "Somepony! Somepony, help! Bloom! Princess Celestia! Somepony, please!"
A bemused scoff echoed through the infinite. "I'll try not to take that personally."
The eyes shrank down to a pony's proportions, and hovered against the backdrop of stars. Lines suddenly darted between those glowing pinpricks, sketching out constellations, connecting into the familiar curves and contours of a mare. Then the shape stepped forward, emerging from the starfield, suddenly tangible and equine.
Princess Luna watched Pomade twirl weightlessly a moment longer, a mischievous twinkle in her eye, before she shrugged. Gravity pulled him downward, and he landed with a thud at her hooves, on a floor that didn't exist.
"Rise," she commanded. Her voice was young, even girlish – he hadn't been expecting that. "Seriously. It's all but impossible to have a serious conversation when one of the participants is lying on the floor and refuses to get up."
Abashed, Pomade scrambled to all fours, brushing himself off and running a hoof over his mane to ensure it was still nicely slicked. Luna noticed, and her lip quirked up in a smirk.
"Am I dreaming?" Pomade said thickly. "Is this... real?"
"Yes. And yes."
"Ah," said Pomade, nodding sagely. "Meaningless double-talk. So this is probably a dream."
Luna sighed, and strolled past Pomade, the intoxicating scent of jasmine following her. "The answers to your questions are not mutually exclusive – the waking world is not so far removed from the world of sleep, and the barrier dividing one from the other is thinner than you might believe. Per my duties, I walk between the two nightly."
"...Meaning?"
"Meaning, yes, you are dreaming, and yet, at the same time, this is real," Luna said testily, scowling. "This conversation, between you and I, is actually happening. So you should probably consider, carefully, how you address me, Pomade Well."
He almost said 'how do you know my name?' before realizing what an absurd thing to say that would be. He was also distracted by the alarming familiarity of that scowl.
"You were the mare in the audience! The one who... who didn't applaud." Pomade felt his ears droop in time with his waning enthusiasm.
"Correct." Luna plucked a golden star from the backdrop, and stuck it to Pomade's forehead.
Pomade blinked, and rubbed it off with a frown. "How? I mean, you look like her, but at the same time, you don't."
"Now who is indulging in double-talk?" Luna smirked impishly – it seemed a natural look for her. She ran a hoof through her mane, the nebula trailing behind her head transforming into strands of silvery blue, which she smoothed out against her neck. She turned, this way and that, before giving her mane a shake, and it melted back into its previous form.
"A simple glamour, nothing more – a look which hearkens back to my... younger days, let us say. Every now and again, I take that form, when I wish to walk the waking world without drawing undue attention." Luna chuckled, and fluffed her wings. "The dress is more about function than form – these would draw more attention, not less, if I left them exposed, wouldn't you agree?"
So that explained the mourner's dress. Pomade supposed that an above-average-sized unicorn in a lacy funeral outfit would draw less attention than an alicorn princess when walking about town... but not that much less.
He trotted after Luna as she trotted through the starscape, following her to the rings of a planet which spun, tilted just slightly, on its axis. Far away, meteors and comets streaked past, leaving trails of cosmic dust in their wake.
"I feel like I should ask," Pomade ventured as Luna paused beside the ringed planet. "What, exactly are you doing here?"
"Besides protecting your psyche from nightmares? Luna batted the rings with a hoof, and it spun like a vinyl record around the planet.
Pomade watched, perplexed and, on some level, delighted. "That wasn't a nightmare. At least, it's not usually one."
Luna raised an eyebrow. "I know. I've seen you have that dream before. It usually ends with more cheering, more applause, and your lady friend mashing your lips together upon a small mountain of hotel keys, while my sister shouts directions at you. Correct?"
"Something like that," Pomade muttered.
"It must be a potent dream, for you to recall it so clearly." Luna nodded. "Of course, why a dream that's normally so pleasant should turn into such a vivid and unsettling nightmare is a mystery. What could have affected your psyche so, to prompt such a turn for the..."
Pomade looked at his hooves.
"...Goodness," Luna whispered. "You are thin-skinned, aren't you?"
Pomade grumbled, his face hot. "Please tell me you didn't just come into my dream to tease me."
"On the contrary, Pomade Well. It's rare that I actually manifest in a dream which is not a nightmare. Rarer, still, to make somepony aware that they are dreaming. I would not do so without good reason."
Pomade tilted his head. "That being?"
"I wanted to meet with you privately," Luna said. "Without the possibility that somepony might interrupt us."
"...Oh?" Pomade leered at Luna. "That's prudent of you, Princess. But if you're worried about Bloom getting jealous—"
Luna cuffed Pomade across the ear, drawing a yelp from him.
"What was that for?" he whined.
"Your presumption. Your familiarity. And, in general, you are annoying me. I am the Princess of the Night, not some waif in estrus, and this is not purely a social call, so you might consider observing proper etiquette when speaking to me." Under her breath, Luna muttered, "why can't they all be as easy to deal with as the Cutie Mark Crusaders?"
"And you called me thin-skinned." Pomade rubbed the spot behind his ear that Luna had struck. "Well, if you're not here for a good time—"
"Careful," Luna said dangerously.
"—then what are you here for? Is it about the play; are you here to complain about the play? Because if you are, then you're already the worst theater critic I've ever had to deal with. The worst they do—"
"Careful," Luna repeated, more sharply this time.
"—I've never actually been hit by a critic before tonight. Your majesty," Pomade added as an afterthought.
"Well. That fact still stands, as I am not a theater critic. Nor am I here to criticize your production." Luna looked squarely at him. "It was competently executed. On a technical level, anyway. Your performers were hit and miss; the actresses portraying my sister and I did a passible job with the material they were given, but the more minor roles... I do believe the thestral playing Lady Macrotus missed a cue in the third act."
Pomade internally kicked himself. How did he miss that?! "Then, and forgive my bluntness please, what is your problem with me?"
Luna shook her head. "I've no problem with you, Pomade Well."
Pomade wanted to scream. "Then why—"
"'Tis the script I wish to discuss. The play, not the production thereof." Luna chuckled bitterly. "The Nightmare Macabre: A Historie in Five Acts. One of Shakesdeere's more widely read and appreciated works. I certainly see why, too. It's grim, and messy, and, as advertised, macabre. Such things play well with audiences, in any age, I think."
"I suppose that's true." Pomade watched Luna warily. "All due respect, though, Princess, I don't think that has much to do with its enduring popularity."
"Oh?"
"It's a compelling story, in its own right."
"Yes. It is a compelling story." Luna smiled a tight, thin smile. "The origins, and rise, and fall, of Nightmare Moon. The ancient enemy of the day. The fallen sister to Princess Celestia. Who invited hatred into her heart, and in so doing—"
"Okay, okay, I get it," Pomade said, holding up a hoof to silence the Princess. "Yeah, alright, fine. I concede, it's natural for you to take something like this personally."
"'Take this personally.'" Luna's jaw worked in silence. "Do you know the story of Nightmare Moon, Pomade Well? The old pony's tale, told to fillies and colts at bedtime?"
"'Course I do." Pomade swallowed. "Princess Lu— or, you, I guess, just you. You were jealous that ponies slept during the night, and didn't appreciate the work you did creating it."
"Nor its beauty. So I created one which would last forever, and battled my sister to rule the land." Luna's bitter, ironic grew melancholy. "That is... a simplification, but there is truth in there. More than there is in Shakesdeere's take, where I feigned goodness until the chance presented itself to stab my sister in the back."
"Yes, thank you, Princess." Pomade looked pointedly at Luna. "I am familiar with the play."
"Simply trying to make a point, Pomade." She regarded him in silence for a moment. "When I returned from my long imprisonment, my sister gave me a treasure trove of literature – the greater whole of Equestria's canon which was written in my absence. Truth be told, I'm still working my way through it, and I only recently came across this play. Reading it was... difficult. But, I reasoned, perhaps there was something I was missing, by reading it off the page, rather than experiencing it as it was meant to be experienced. A longshot, I know, but one which I clung to.
"Imagine how pleased I was when I learned that the play had a highly popular production on Bridleway, in Manehattan. So I bought a ticket – under an alias, naturally – and attended incognito, hoping that Pomade Well's revival would have some added dimension, some room for nuance, which the script lacked."
"And here we are now," Pomade finished for her. "I understand why it bothers you, Princess. I mean, I guess I do; I can't really identify. Hell, who could? But it's historical fiction. It's based on a true story. Nopony's claimed that it's fact."
"And yet it is billed as a history," Luna looked at Pomade, her expression soft. "Do you want to know why the Nightmare took hold of me? It was not hatred for the day, or for my sister, as Shakesdeere wrote. Nor was it mere envy. I wanted to be known. I wanted to be loved. I wanted ponies to look on me with the adoration with which they showered Celestia. The affection they still show her."
She turned away. The starfield was beginning to darken, the comets' trails fading, the starry lights winking out, one by one.
"What I did was wicked. Misguided, and evil. My subjects, and my sister, have forgiven me for it, and I have forgiven myself. But it has not been forgotten. It cannot be forgotten, nor should it be forgotten. I have made my peace with this – and, in truth, there are parts to the Nightmare Moon mythos which I find... charming. Mostly the parts with candy."
Pomade snickered.
"Yet I fear that that is still how I shall be primarily known." Luna cast her eyes downward. "That my subjects will never come to know and love Princess Luna, the mare, but this cultural construction of her. At best, as a misguided child whose heart was corrupted, and at worst, as a Shakesdeerean villain who willfully sought to end life as we know it, because she was, by nature, evil."
"...I'm real sorry about that, Princess." said Pomade. "But I don't get why you're telling me all of this. What do you want me to do? Shut down the play?"
"Would you, if I asked?" She silenced him before he could answer with an upraised hoof. "I wouldn't, and I won't. Perhaps I've no room to call you thin-skinned, when I am bringing these complaints to you, but I would never censor. Rather, I suppose I am telling you this, because... because I am not Celestia; I cannot walk among my little ponies and bask in their adoration. That is simply not who I am. All I can do is hope that I can inspire my subjects by setting an example for them. That they will spread tales of the benevolent Princess of the Night, who shielded them from their nightmares, and helped them in their own, personal journies. And that, in time, this will be what springs to mind when ponies think of me. Not the Nightmare Macabre."
A smile split Pomade's face, as a thought occured to him. "Princess... I think I'm starting to understand what you want from me."
Luna's ear twitched, and she smiled blithely. Her body melted away into the starfield, the lines shaping her form vanishing, the constellations drifting apart as their stars winked out altogether.
"Why, Pomade," she tittered. "I've no idea what you're talking about."
Pomade Well's eyes fluttered open. He lifted his head from his pillow to peer out the window. Dawn, gray and overcast, greeted him. It was early, that much was clear – he wasn't even sure how long he'd really slept.
How odd that he felt completely rested, then.
Pomade bolted out of bed and out the door, hoping the carpet would muffle his hoofsteps as he approached Blooming Garland's door. He knocked on it, twice, softly.
Nothing.
Pomade knocked on it a third time, louder. A fourth, still louder. A fifth—
The door swung open, and he was greeted with Bloom's yawning face, still darkened with patches of black dye. "For pony's sake, Pom, do you know how early it is?"
"Honestly? No. Too early for mimosas, I presume."
"Ugh, if that's seriously what brought you over..." She rubbed the sleep from her eyes, and frowned at him, though it faded when she saw the look in his eye. "What is it?"
"Something happened to me tonight." Pomade lowered his voice. "Something important. I need to talk it over with you, and... I don't believe it's the sort of thing that should wait."
With concern on her face, Bloom stood aside, and Pomade shuffled inside.
"I don't even know where to begin with this, Pom." Blooming Garland set her mug of cheap, instant coffee down on her coffee table, beside a plate of cold scones she'd bought for breakfast the day before. "It all sounds so... intense, so vivid. I mean, I'd heard that Princess Luna visits ponies in their dreams, but I've never met anypony who's had it happen to them before."
"Well... you have now," Pomade chuckled into his own drink. The two sat together, huddled on the couch in her suite, beneath a blanket that covered them both from behind.
Bloom bit her lip, and placed her hoof around his back. "What are you gonna do, Pom? I mean... the show..."
"...Must go on," he says, wincing a bit at the cliche. "She didn't ask me to cancel it, Bloom. And, well, frankly... I probably wouldn't, even if she did."
"No, of course you wouldn't. Not you. That'd be the smart thing to do." She nudged him playfully. "What will you do, then?"
Pomade set his cup on the table and took a deep breath.
"I've been thinking... the story of Nightmare Moon's birth and fall, that's been done, and done well. Perhaps there's room for the story of Nightmare Moon's redemption. A cool, contemporary take on it all. Make no mistake, it'd be a monumental effort – probably will have to be a musical, too, because that's just how things are these days..."
Bloom laughed.
"...But I believe it can be done. Moreover, I believe it should be done." He looked seriously at Bloom. "However. I'm not interested in doing the job without my Mare in the Moon at my side."
"At your side, huh?" said Bloom, smirking. She snuggled against Pomade, and cupped his cheek to press her nose against his. "Can I get a producer's credit?"
"Swear to do something about that coffee breath, and you can have whatever the hell you want."
"Like you have any room to talk," she said, before pressing their lips together.
From across the killing field, the alicorns of light and dark stared at one another. The Nightmare Macabre sneered, imperiously leveling a hoof at her sibling.
"What sayeth thou, Celestia? How now?
The kingdom built on sunlight's golden kiss
Sees in the nightmare's cold abyss an end
To all the enterprise of ponykind.
Yet thou are not content to lay and die
In silv'ry fields, with moonlit jasmine choked.
By air and sea and land alike, you come,
By horn and hoof, a final stand you wage
And here, at last, upon the end of all
You come to treat with me, the Nightmare Queen.
What sayeth thou? what scheme, what toothy lie?
Speak quickly now, or keep thy peace and die."
Celestia met her sister's haughtiness with warmth and compassion. She stepped forward, her voice pleading, her eyes wide and dewey.
"'Tis not as sov'reign that I come to thee
But as thy flesh and blood, thy trueborn kin.
No terms of peace, no treaty can be writ
Which can equate in any mean amount
The love I bear thee deep within my heart.
Pray! oh, sister, oh fallen Nightmare fair!
To Canterlot, let us remove, and there
We shall together set aright the spheres
And mend the bloody gap within our realm
For which love, alone, can make recompense.
Let sun and moon in harmony abide,
And let this nightmare, at long last, subside."
But Nightmare Moon threw back her head, and laughed, as thunder crashed and lightning split the sky.
"Thy words are hollow, and thy fate is sealed!"
Her hoof dug into the ground; she grinned.
"Lay on! By horn and hoof shall come thy end.
Let carrion thy bones and flesh attend."
Celestia bowed her head and shut her eyes, and let a single tear of regret slip down her regal face. When it passed, she lifted herself, and unfurled her wings, a golden light beneath her hooves. Her words struck like hot iron.
"It is not horn and hoof, but harmony
That will Equestria deliver. Hark!"
Six points of light appeared around Celestia – red and blue, yellow and pink, green and violet. Nightmare Moon's eyes widened, and she roared a defiant challenge as those six lights coalesced into a white-hot ball of light. A rainbow wave streaked toward the the Nightmare Macabre, and swept her away, carrying her far into the night's sky.
Like an oil stain, the face of a mare spread across the moon.
Fingers of gold crept across the sky, driving away the velvety purple of the night. The moon descended below the horizon, and the sun rose to take its place. Behind Celestia, a column of blood-spattered ponies stampeded up the hill, and she turned to greet them. Their captain doffed her greathelm, and smiled proudly at her soldiers.
"See now, ponies, the morning's golden rays?
The nightmare moon is fell'd. We've won the day!"
She bowed, and her soldiers bowed with her, and sang their savior's praises.
"Hail, hail, Celestia, the sun-kissed queen!"
But Celestia drew her captain up, and shook her head soberly.
"'Tis not a time for merriment or cheer,
But for mourning. I am no queen, my friends,
And conquest not a thing to celebrate.
For though we have the day reclaimed and saved,
The blood we shed may not be washed away,
Nor can what I have wrought be now undone.
My sister's soul, I sought to save. Alas!
I have condemned her to oblivion,
And in so doing have myself been damn'd.
My heart is rent asunder, and you would name
This pain, this gaping wound, a victory?"
Unshed tears glimmered in the morning's glow.
"What sweetest suffering must defeat be."
The victorious princess, and her loyal guard, stood among the detritus of a climactic final battle that no mortal could now recall, the hard-won light of a brand new day shining to the east.
And the world exploded into applause, whistles and stomps and cheers that rang across the cavernous Manehattan stagehouse. One could get drunk on that kind of adoration, and Pomade Well felt vaguely tipsy. It almost made emerging from the illusion worth it.
He opened his eyes with a sigh, returning to a world of ropes and velvet curtains, wooden boards and brick walls and the ever-present theater tang of sweat and make-up. He'd seen The Nightmare Macabre, his own production and those of others, enough times to know that it would never match what he saw in his mind's eye. He'd done his best to recreate it, of course, and he'd done as good a job as anypony. Still, the most he could boast is that the voices, the performances, met and surpassed what he heard in his head when he read the play to himself. And so he made it his nightly ritual to slip away and shut his eyes at the climax, and let his actresses bear him away in his imagination.
Now, though, it was time for another ritual.
Pomade trotted to the wings, offstage right, and stared out at the cast assembled at the front of the stage. They bowed, as one, the Princesses in the middle of their line, and parted to make way for him. They beckoned him, and he sauntered onto the stage, grinning and running a hoof in his slicked-back mane.
The Princesses stood aside for him, and they linked their forelegs together; the crowd in the theater house stood for him, their whistles and cheers crescendoing. On either side, a chain of ponies stretched, a dozen and a half speaking parts.
Pomade gazed across the crowd, at his adoring public. All were standing, all were cheering.
Except for one.
A unicorn sat in the very back of the house, with a silvery-blue mane and a coat just a shade or two darker, over which she wore a black mourner's dress that hid most of her body in lace. She had to be large, larger than the average mare, to be seen over the burly stallion in front of her. Even her horn was massive, as long as his leg from hoof to knee, Pomade guessed.
She met his eyes, and scowled, the stage lights glinting off of her green-ringed eyes.
Pomade's elation tasted like ashes in his mouth as he bowed.
"...I don't think the audience noticed, personally, but when Batsy flubbed her line, I wanted to strangle her. We drilled that a hundred thousand times, and she still couldn't get the timing right!" 'Nightmare Moon' scoffed as she trotted down the hotel corridor with Pomade, the plush carpet beneath them muffling her hoofbeats.
"Hm," said Pomade.
"I mean, the audience certainly didn't catch it, but I did. You did too, right?" she continued. "In act three, scene two? The 'chop her into messes' speech?"
"Hm." He actually had zero idea what she was talking about. Agreeing, or making vauge noises that could be construed as agreeing, was just something he'd learned to do when mares were talking and he couldn't be bothered to listen.
He felt a thump against his hip – his companion's flank bumping against his own – and turned to regard her. Sure, she was out of costume now – no silver regalia or pleather wings, and her natural, chestnut curls framed her face instead of the starry blue wig. But the black dye in her coat and the make-up on her horn, though temporary, didn't come out as easily, and she drew the occasional stare from the hotel's guests and staff as she moved about the place. The look of concern she was giving him now was utterly ill-suited to Nightmare Moon.
"Sorry, Bloom," said Pomade with a half-smile. "Guess my mind's just elsewhere right now."
Blooming Garland sidled closer to him, dropping her voice. "Pom, what's the matter? You've been acting weird ever since the curtain call. Even your notes had less Applewood narcissism in 'em than usual."
Pomade looked away, chewing his lip. "Did you see that unicorn mare in the back of the house? The blue one, with the long horn?"
"I didn't. I was more preoccupied with blowing kisses to that journalist from the Manehattan Bugle." She nudged him again, harder. "Should I be jealous?"
He had to smirk at that. "No, no, it's not like that. She just – she didn't applaud, that's all."
Blooming Garland snorted. "Oh, is that all? Here I was worried it was something serious."
Pomade whipped his head around to look at her, stricken. "Bloom!"
"Oh, come now, Pom. I knew you were thin-skinned, but to fixate on the one mare in a packed house who wasn't giving you a standing ovation?" She shook her head, sighing.
Pomade flushed. "You could at least pretend to take me seriously."
They came to a stop by her suite, and she stepped in front of him to take his face between her hooves. "The show's a hit, Pomade. It's always been a hit. In the grand scheme of things, what does it matter if one pony out of hundreds didn't stomp her hooves for you?"
"...Mm." Pomade smiled tightly, and nodded. "Sure."
"What was that?" said Bloom, tilting her head and leaning closer. "That still didn't sound like you."
"I said 'if you're feeling so good about the play, then perhaps we ought to celebrate a little.'" His smile grew more relaxed, more natural.
"Knew you were in there somewhere." She pressed her forehead against his, mindful not to tap him with the point of her horn. "Sorry, but I'm gonna scrub this foul dye out of my coat, and sleep for the next eighteen hours – and no, before you ask, I am not looking for company in either endeavor."
"Mm... shame."
Bloom pulled away, and pecked him on the tip of his nose. "Perhaps tomorrow night."
Pomade leered at her. "Or tomorrow morning?"
"Bring champagne and orange juice, and we'll see. I'll need at least three mimosas in my system to stomach your touch that early." With a smoky look, she magically unlatched her door and backed inside. Then, turning, she looped her tail around the knob, and shut the door with a swing of her hips.
Pomade grinned the rest of the way to his room, thinking to himself what a lucky stallion he was.
...In most respects, he amended, when he recalled the empty bed awaiting him.
With a snap, and a hum of electricity, the spotlight switched on, shining in Pomade's face. He recoiled instinctively, raising a hoof to shield his eyes. The house beyond was pitch black – or maybe the light was just too bright for him to see anything past it – but he could hear the murmurs and whispers of the crowd. And he knew that they could see him.
"Psst!"
Pomade looked to his left. Princess Celestia was seated in a director's chair in the wings, wearing a scarf and beret, drinking a mimosa from a long-stemmed glass. Next to was Blooming Garland, in costume as Nighmare Moon, yet colored naturally underneath her armor.
"Read," Celestia mouthed, gesturing emphatically.
Pomade gulped and looked at his hooves – the script was open to a scene halfway through, one he hadn't rehearsed, hadn't even read, and now, couldn't read. The words on the page were gibberish, random squiggles and doodles of suns and moons, and coffee cups and traffic cones.
Gulping, and sweating in the spotlight's heat, he looked at Celestia. "I can't," he whispered hoarsely. "I don't know how."
The murmurs in the crowd grew restless. Bloom looked cooly at them from the corner of her eye, and itched with a hind hoof at the plate encasing her neck.
"Wrong page," Celestia mouthed. She pantomimed flipping a piece of paper open. The curtains beside them shimmered and waved with a musical chime.
Bloom leaned over and stuck her tongue into the mimosa, lapping it into her mouth.
Pomade did as he was told, and flipped the page open, only slightly mollified by what he saw. He still didn't know what play they were doing, but the photorealistic elephant at least offered some direction.
So Pomade drew himself up, and took a long, deep breath.
"BWAROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!"
Immediately, the audience laughed and cheered, hooves pounding the seats and the boards with delight. Pomade's chest swelled with courage. Rearing onto his back legs and spreading his forelegs, he repeated himself, twice as long and loud.
"BWAROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!"
The applause grew rapturous. Ponies whistled, and cheered, and called out his name; hotel keys and roses were flung onto the stage in front of him. Pomade, grinning, turned to look at Celestia and Bloom.
They were nowhere to be found. In their place was a unicorn, with a silvery blue mane, and a horn half as long as Pomade's leg. Where her eyes should have been, there were only vacant pits.
The eyeless mare scowled at him.
Pomade felt his hind legs quake, and he fell to all fours, dropping his script as he did. Cursing himself, he tried to search for it, as the audience's cheering melted into irritated, unsatisfied mutterings.
"Bwaroom?" Pomade ventured in a squeaky, uncertain voice.
His response was a lone, derisive snort, though there were still some scattered laughs.
"Bwaroom!" he repeated, gamboling forward frantically. The audience's laughter grew mocking, from giggles to jeers.
Pomade took one last, desperate breath.
"HAWWWWWWW. Hee-HAWWWWWWWWW."
Insults and epithets joined the jeers, as the audience's mockery reached a fever pitch. Pomade ducked as rotten fruit pelted the stage, exploding upon the boards, and smothering the tokens of favor from before.
He whirled to glare at the eyeless mare. "This is your fault! They loved me until you came along!"
The eyeless mare laughed silently without breaking her scowl, and shook her head. Rising, she turned away, and trotted into the wings behind her, the curtains enveloping her, making her vanish.
Pomade tried to gallop after her, but slipped on a banana, to the crowd's mocking delight. He fell, face-first, and kept on falling through the boards. The jeers of the audience grew distant, muted, as he tumbled end over end through an endless sea of stars. The curtains kept pace with him all the while, rustling with some unfelt breeze, even when the boards were gone and the spotlight was nothing but a pinprick of light among a thousand thousand more just like it.
Pomade, curious, looked upstage, between the curtains. Teal eyes, larger than his whole body, gazed back at him.
Pomade screamed and covered his face. "Somepony! Somepony, help! Bloom! Princess Celestia! Somepony, please!"
A bemused scoff echoed through the infinite. "I'll try not to take that personally."
The eyes shrank down to a pony's proportions, and hovered against the backdrop of stars. Lines suddenly darted between those glowing pinpricks, sketching out constellations, connecting into the familiar curves and contours of a mare. Then the shape stepped forward, emerging from the starfield, suddenly tangible and equine.
Princess Luna watched Pomade twirl weightlessly a moment longer, a mischievous twinkle in her eye, before she shrugged. Gravity pulled him downward, and he landed with a thud at her hooves, on a floor that didn't exist.
"Rise," she commanded. Her voice was young, even girlish – he hadn't been expecting that. "Seriously. It's all but impossible to have a serious conversation when one of the participants is lying on the floor and refuses to get up."
Abashed, Pomade scrambled to all fours, brushing himself off and running a hoof over his mane to ensure it was still nicely slicked. Luna noticed, and her lip quirked up in a smirk.
"Am I dreaming?" Pomade said thickly. "Is this... real?"
"Yes. And yes."
"Ah," said Pomade, nodding sagely. "Meaningless double-talk. So this is probably a dream."
Luna sighed, and strolled past Pomade, the intoxicating scent of jasmine following her. "The answers to your questions are not mutually exclusive – the waking world is not so far removed from the world of sleep, and the barrier dividing one from the other is thinner than you might believe. Per my duties, I walk between the two nightly."
"...Meaning?"
"Meaning, yes, you are dreaming, and yet, at the same time, this is real," Luna said testily, scowling. "This conversation, between you and I, is actually happening. So you should probably consider, carefully, how you address me, Pomade Well."
He almost said 'how do you know my name?' before realizing what an absurd thing to say that would be. He was also distracted by the alarming familiarity of that scowl.
"You were the mare in the audience! The one who... who didn't applaud." Pomade felt his ears droop in time with his waning enthusiasm.
"Correct." Luna plucked a golden star from the backdrop, and stuck it to Pomade's forehead.
Pomade blinked, and rubbed it off with a frown. "How? I mean, you look like her, but at the same time, you don't."
"Now who is indulging in double-talk?" Luna smirked impishly – it seemed a natural look for her. She ran a hoof through her mane, the nebula trailing behind her head transforming into strands of silvery blue, which she smoothed out against her neck. She turned, this way and that, before giving her mane a shake, and it melted back into its previous form.
"A simple glamour, nothing more – a look which hearkens back to my... younger days, let us say. Every now and again, I take that form, when I wish to walk the waking world without drawing undue attention." Luna chuckled, and fluffed her wings. "The dress is more about function than form – these would draw more attention, not less, if I left them exposed, wouldn't you agree?"
So that explained the mourner's dress. Pomade supposed that an above-average-sized unicorn in a lacy funeral outfit would draw less attention than an alicorn princess when walking about town... but not that much less.
He trotted after Luna as she trotted through the starscape, following her to the rings of a planet which spun, tilted just slightly, on its axis. Far away, meteors and comets streaked past, leaving trails of cosmic dust in their wake.
"I feel like I should ask," Pomade ventured as Luna paused beside the ringed planet. "What, exactly are you doing here?"
"Besides protecting your psyche from nightmares? Luna batted the rings with a hoof, and it spun like a vinyl record around the planet.
Pomade watched, perplexed and, on some level, delighted. "That wasn't a nightmare. At least, it's not usually one."
Luna raised an eyebrow. "I know. I've seen you have that dream before. It usually ends with more cheering, more applause, and your lady friend mashing your lips together upon a small mountain of hotel keys, while my sister shouts directions at you. Correct?"
"Something like that," Pomade muttered.
"It must be a potent dream, for you to recall it so clearly." Luna nodded. "Of course, why a dream that's normally so pleasant should turn into such a vivid and unsettling nightmare is a mystery. What could have affected your psyche so, to prompt such a turn for the..."
Pomade looked at his hooves.
"...Goodness," Luna whispered. "You are thin-skinned, aren't you?"
Pomade grumbled, his face hot. "Please tell me you didn't just come into my dream to tease me."
"On the contrary, Pomade Well. It's rare that I actually manifest in a dream which is not a nightmare. Rarer, still, to make somepony aware that they are dreaming. I would not do so without good reason."
Pomade tilted his head. "That being?"
"I wanted to meet with you privately," Luna said. "Without the possibility that somepony might interrupt us."
"...Oh?" Pomade leered at Luna. "That's prudent of you, Princess. But if you're worried about Bloom getting jealous—"
Luna cuffed Pomade across the ear, drawing a yelp from him.
"What was that for?" he whined.
"Your presumption. Your familiarity. And, in general, you are annoying me. I am the Princess of the Night, not some waif in estrus, and this is not purely a social call, so you might consider observing proper etiquette when speaking to me." Under her breath, Luna muttered, "why can't they all be as easy to deal with as the Cutie Mark Crusaders?"
"And you called me thin-skinned." Pomade rubbed the spot behind his ear that Luna had struck. "Well, if you're not here for a good time—"
"Careful," Luna said dangerously.
"—then what are you here for? Is it about the play; are you here to complain about the play? Because if you are, then you're already the worst theater critic I've ever had to deal with. The worst they do—"
"Careful," Luna repeated, more sharply this time.
"—I've never actually been hit by a critic before tonight. Your majesty," Pomade added as an afterthought.
"Well. That fact still stands, as I am not a theater critic. Nor am I here to criticize your production." Luna looked squarely at him. "It was competently executed. On a technical level, anyway. Your performers were hit and miss; the actresses portraying my sister and I did a passible job with the material they were given, but the more minor roles... I do believe the thestral playing Lady Macrotus missed a cue in the third act."
Pomade internally kicked himself. How did he miss that?! "Then, and forgive my bluntness please, what is your problem with me?"
Luna shook her head. "I've no problem with you, Pomade Well."
Pomade wanted to scream. "Then why—"
"'Tis the script I wish to discuss. The play, not the production thereof." Luna chuckled bitterly. "The Nightmare Macabre: A Historie in Five Acts. One of Shakesdeere's more widely read and appreciated works. I certainly see why, too. It's grim, and messy, and, as advertised, macabre. Such things play well with audiences, in any age, I think."
"I suppose that's true." Pomade watched Luna warily. "All due respect, though, Princess, I don't think that has much to do with its enduring popularity."
"Oh?"
"It's a compelling story, in its own right."
"Yes. It is a compelling story." Luna smiled a tight, thin smile. "The origins, and rise, and fall, of Nightmare Moon. The ancient enemy of the day. The fallen sister to Princess Celestia. Who invited hatred into her heart, and in so doing—"
"Okay, okay, I get it," Pomade said, holding up a hoof to silence the Princess. "Yeah, alright, fine. I concede, it's natural for you to take something like this personally."
"'Take this personally.'" Luna's jaw worked in silence. "Do you know the story of Nightmare Moon, Pomade Well? The old pony's tale, told to fillies and colts at bedtime?"
"'Course I do." Pomade swallowed. "Princess Lu— or, you, I guess, just you. You were jealous that ponies slept during the night, and didn't appreciate the work you did creating it."
"Nor its beauty. So I created one which would last forever, and battled my sister to rule the land." Luna's bitter, ironic grew melancholy. "That is... a simplification, but there is truth in there. More than there is in Shakesdeere's take, where I feigned goodness until the chance presented itself to stab my sister in the back."
"Yes, thank you, Princess." Pomade looked pointedly at Luna. "I am familiar with the play."
"Simply trying to make a point, Pomade." She regarded him in silence for a moment. "When I returned from my long imprisonment, my sister gave me a treasure trove of literature – the greater whole of Equestria's canon which was written in my absence. Truth be told, I'm still working my way through it, and I only recently came across this play. Reading it was... difficult. But, I reasoned, perhaps there was something I was missing, by reading it off the page, rather than experiencing it as it was meant to be experienced. A longshot, I know, but one which I clung to.
"Imagine how pleased I was when I learned that the play had a highly popular production on Bridleway, in Manehattan. So I bought a ticket – under an alias, naturally – and attended incognito, hoping that Pomade Well's revival would have some added dimension, some room for nuance, which the script lacked."
"And here we are now," Pomade finished for her. "I understand why it bothers you, Princess. I mean, I guess I do; I can't really identify. Hell, who could? But it's historical fiction. It's based on a true story. Nopony's claimed that it's fact."
"And yet it is billed as a history," Luna looked at Pomade, her expression soft. "Do you want to know why the Nightmare took hold of me? It was not hatred for the day, or for my sister, as Shakesdeere wrote. Nor was it mere envy. I wanted to be known. I wanted to be loved. I wanted ponies to look on me with the adoration with which they showered Celestia. The affection they still show her."
She turned away. The starfield was beginning to darken, the comets' trails fading, the starry lights winking out, one by one.
"What I did was wicked. Misguided, and evil. My subjects, and my sister, have forgiven me for it, and I have forgiven myself. But it has not been forgotten. It cannot be forgotten, nor should it be forgotten. I have made my peace with this – and, in truth, there are parts to the Nightmare Moon mythos which I find... charming. Mostly the parts with candy."
Pomade snickered.
"Yet I fear that that is still how I shall be primarily known." Luna cast her eyes downward. "That my subjects will never come to know and love Princess Luna, the mare, but this cultural construction of her. At best, as a misguided child whose heart was corrupted, and at worst, as a Shakesdeerean villain who willfully sought to end life as we know it, because she was, by nature, evil."
"...I'm real sorry about that, Princess." said Pomade. "But I don't get why you're telling me all of this. What do you want me to do? Shut down the play?"
"Would you, if I asked?" She silenced him before he could answer with an upraised hoof. "I wouldn't, and I won't. Perhaps I've no room to call you thin-skinned, when I am bringing these complaints to you, but I would never censor. Rather, I suppose I am telling you this, because... because I am not Celestia; I cannot walk among my little ponies and bask in their adoration. That is simply not who I am. All I can do is hope that I can inspire my subjects by setting an example for them. That they will spread tales of the benevolent Princess of the Night, who shielded them from their nightmares, and helped them in their own, personal journies. And that, in time, this will be what springs to mind when ponies think of me. Not the Nightmare Macabre."
A smile split Pomade's face, as a thought occured to him. "Princess... I think I'm starting to understand what you want from me."
Luna's ear twitched, and she smiled blithely. Her body melted away into the starfield, the lines shaping her form vanishing, the constellations drifting apart as their stars winked out altogether.
"Why, Pomade," she tittered. "I've no idea what you're talking about."
Pomade Well's eyes fluttered open. He lifted his head from his pillow to peer out the window. Dawn, gray and overcast, greeted him. It was early, that much was clear – he wasn't even sure how long he'd really slept.
How odd that he felt completely rested, then.
Pomade bolted out of bed and out the door, hoping the carpet would muffle his hoofsteps as he approached Blooming Garland's door. He knocked on it, twice, softly.
Nothing.
Pomade knocked on it a third time, louder. A fourth, still louder. A fifth—
The door swung open, and he was greeted with Bloom's yawning face, still darkened with patches of black dye. "For pony's sake, Pom, do you know how early it is?"
"Honestly? No. Too early for mimosas, I presume."
"Ugh, if that's seriously what brought you over..." She rubbed the sleep from her eyes, and frowned at him, though it faded when she saw the look in his eye. "What is it?"
"Something happened to me tonight." Pomade lowered his voice. "Something important. I need to talk it over with you, and... I don't believe it's the sort of thing that should wait."
With concern on her face, Bloom stood aside, and Pomade shuffled inside.
"I don't even know where to begin with this, Pom." Blooming Garland set her mug of cheap, instant coffee down on her coffee table, beside a plate of cold scones she'd bought for breakfast the day before. "It all sounds so... intense, so vivid. I mean, I'd heard that Princess Luna visits ponies in their dreams, but I've never met anypony who's had it happen to them before."
"Well... you have now," Pomade chuckled into his own drink. The two sat together, huddled on the couch in her suite, beneath a blanket that covered them both from behind.
Bloom bit her lip, and placed her hoof around his back. "What are you gonna do, Pom? I mean... the show..."
"...Must go on," he says, wincing a bit at the cliche. "She didn't ask me to cancel it, Bloom. And, well, frankly... I probably wouldn't, even if she did."
"No, of course you wouldn't. Not you. That'd be the smart thing to do." She nudged him playfully. "What will you do, then?"
Pomade set his cup on the table and took a deep breath.
"I've been thinking... the story of Nightmare Moon's birth and fall, that's been done, and done well. Perhaps there's room for the story of Nightmare Moon's redemption. A cool, contemporary take on it all. Make no mistake, it'd be a monumental effort – probably will have to be a musical, too, because that's just how things are these days..."
Bloom laughed.
"...But I believe it can be done. Moreover, I believe it should be done." He looked seriously at Bloom. "However. I'm not interested in doing the job without my Mare in the Moon at my side."
"At your side, huh?" said Bloom, smirking. She snuggled against Pomade, and cupped his cheek to press her nose against his. "Can I get a producer's credit?"
"Swear to do something about that coffee breath, and you can have whatever the hell you want."
"Like you have any room to talk," she said, before pressing their lips together.
Pics
Genre: ...
Thoughts: This was a delight from start to finish. I mean, Shakesdeere. Way to take your concept and ride that sucker all the way to Writeoff Valhalla, or at least the point where this metaphor loses a wheel and careens into a sidewall at top speed and we end up needing A PRACTICAL APPROACH TO THAUMIC FIRES, which I hear is a thing.
The story faces an early test where it jumps from Shakesdeere out to Pony RL, and it passes quite handily. I mention that moment because I was totally down with Ye Olde Shakesdeere stuff and could've probably enjoyed a whole story's worth of it, and the story needed to get me to be OK with stopping its Celestia-NMM-Shakesdeere goodness and make me suddenly care about a couple of OCs I'd never heard of before, and it pulled that off. Mega props, Author; despite your decision to go with ponyfic hard-mode covfefe.
I will also note that the door-closing-with-tail thing was pretty high-octane flirtatiousness for what's otherwise a basically clean fic. I am not saying it should be removed; I am merely calling this out for... ah, future reference and/or academic interest. Yes, let's go with that.
So why am I leaning more toward Strong rather than Top Contender with this mofo? Well, to be honest, the central conversation between Starmare and Slick Top feels strongly reminiscent of the CMC conversations it's structured after and which it references. This is something where I struggle to point at any one thing and say it's bad; more like, in a fic full of brilliance and overwhelmingly awesome potential, that feels like it needs to be the biggest moment, and right now I don't quite feel like it lives up to that full potential for me. Maybe it's just too reminiscent of those past conversations. Maybe I don't quite buy that Slick Top is persuaded to do the thing he talks about doing at the end. Or maybe it feels a bit anticlimactic having him end with just talking about doing the thing, even though I actually like the conversation he has there with Tail Lady.
I regret that I can't do a better job of pinpointing my sticking point, nor that I can overlook it. But this is good stuff either way and I feel it at least deserves to make finals.
Tier: Strong (may be revised upward.... time will tell)
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To TC, or not to TC, that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the Writeoff to suffer
Dat feeling of regret from maybe over-rating,
Or to hold back and say 'tis merely Strong,
And by keeping powder dry, to not look
Like a schmuck. For TC is a consummation
devoutly to be wished. But with Strong, well
Do I sleep and Dream. Aye, there's the rub,
for if I over-rate, what screams may come,
when others rate this fair submission...
To Posh-Pan-Pantsu-Chan, or to Horizon's,
Be all my rates compare-ed.
Thoughts: This was a delight from start to finish. I mean, Shakesdeere. Way to take your concept and ride that sucker all the way to Writeoff Valhalla, or at least the point where this metaphor loses a wheel and careens into a sidewall at top speed and we end up needing A PRACTICAL APPROACH TO THAUMIC FIRES, which I hear is a thing.
The story faces an early test where it jumps from Shakesdeere out to Pony RL, and it passes quite handily. I mention that moment because I was totally down with Ye Olde Shakesdeere stuff and could've probably enjoyed a whole story's worth of it, and the story needed to get me to be OK with stopping its Celestia-NMM-Shakesdeere goodness and make me suddenly care about a couple of OCs I'd never heard of before, and it pulled that off. Mega props, Author; despite your decision to go with ponyfic hard-mode covfefe.
I will also note that the door-closing-with-tail thing was pretty high-octane flirtatiousness for what's otherwise a basically clean fic. I am not saying it should be removed; I am merely calling this out for... ah, future reference and/or academic interest. Yes, let's go with that.
So why am I leaning more toward Strong rather than Top Contender with this mofo? Well, to be honest, the central conversation between Starmare and Slick Top feels strongly reminiscent of the CMC conversations it's structured after and which it references. This is something where I struggle to point at any one thing and say it's bad; more like, in a fic full of brilliance and overwhelmingly awesome potential, that feels like it needs to be the biggest moment, and right now I don't quite feel like it lives up to that full potential for me. Maybe it's just too reminiscent of those past conversations. Maybe I don't quite buy that Slick Top is persuaded to do the thing he talks about doing at the end. Or maybe it feels a bit anticlimactic having him end with just talking about doing the thing, even though I actually like the conversation he has there with Tail Lady.
I regret that I can't do a better job of pinpointing my sticking point, nor that I can overlook it. But this is good stuff either way and I feel it at least deserves to make finals.
Tier: Strong (may be revised upward.... time will tell)
Phew, I'm out of practice being able to parse Shakespeare or Shakesdeere. I forgot just how hard it is to get through it, but you nailed the vibe brilliantly.
I'm really not sure what to think of this story. I loved the characters. Pomade and Garland were both brilliantly done. I admit, I loved Garland's sultry vibe and the back and forth between them. That was simply magnificent. Luna's characterization was also spot-on. The characters really drove the story for this. However... I can't help but feel a little let down by the ending. What bugs me is I can't put my finger on why.
It could very easily be that I only got five hours of sleep and tried to read this first thing in the morning. Just... a pony with the amount of pride (come on, he's basically being a jackass--literally, nice touch, by the way--to the freaking Princess of the Night) being able to be convinced of anything from one dream sequences seems a bit of a stretch. Or maybe this story just needs a longer denouement. I'm realizing just how short that is and it could use a bit more conversation between the two, especially considering how much Luna and Pomade got into it.
And maybe I just want to see a bit more shipping because of all the shipping entries in this story, even if it's shipping two OCs and I'm a hopeless romantic. :P
I'm really not sure what to think of this story. I loved the characters. Pomade and Garland were both brilliantly done. I admit, I loved Garland's sultry vibe and the back and forth between them. That was simply magnificent. Luna's characterization was also spot-on. The characters really drove the story for this. However... I can't help but feel a little let down by the ending. What bugs me is I can't put my finger on why.
It could very easily be that I only got five hours of sleep and tried to read this first thing in the morning. Just... a pony with the amount of pride (come on, he's basically being a jackass--literally, nice touch, by the way--to the freaking Princess of the Night) being able to be convinced of anything from one dream sequences seems a bit of a stretch. Or maybe this story just needs a longer denouement. I'm realizing just how short that is and it could use a bit more conversation between the two, especially considering how much Luna and Pomade got into it.
And maybe I just want to see a bit more shipping because of all the shipping entries in this story, even if it's shipping two OCs and I'm a hopeless romantic. :P
I thought I was in for poetry hour at first, which would have been delightful enough, but ah! 'Twas Shakesdeere all along. Canon accepted.
There's are plenty of stories about Luna accepting and reconciling with her past, and her first proper episode dealt with changing local opinion of her, but I can't say I've ever seen a story address altering her image in the zeitgeist at large. Bravo for originality, and a great connection to the chosen art piece. Her suggestions to Pom are barely even that, relying on subtly guiding him rather than hitting him on over the head with what she wants, despite actually hitting him over the head.
Also, like Coffee mentioned, your original character work is compelling, especially for the space they occupy. Double good work.
There's are plenty of stories about Luna accepting and reconciling with her past, and her first proper episode dealt with changing local opinion of her, but I can't say I've ever seen a story address altering her image in the zeitgeist at large. Bravo for originality, and a great connection to the chosen art piece. Her suggestions to Pom are barely even that, relying on subtly guiding him rather than hitting him on over the head with what she wants, despite actually hitting him over the head.
Also, like Coffee mentioned, your original character work is compelling, especially for the space they occupy. Double good work.
Shakesdeere, huh. Nice.
So I was just about ready to rip into this one and say that it should have kept its form, used iambic pentameter all the way through instead of just in dialogue, and cleaned up the language to be consistent and readable. Then the first scene ended and it turns out the play was, in fact, the thing. Got me good!
It's still kind of a problem, though, because that first scene as it stands feels very different and superfluous to the story that comes afterwards. Like... I get it, you did the play scene just to do the play scene and have it be fun to read. It's fanservice. Okay. Nothing wrong with some fanservice! But it might be better if it wasn't so transparently fanservice. Try and work in some more of the play's specifics later, to make it more important in the following story, or change the play scene a bit to include some groundwork for the later story.
Speaking of which... what is the later story? Luna talks to Pom (which I can't not read as Porn), and they reach an agreement to... do what? Alter the script or presentation somehow? Just write a whole new play about her redemption? Rereading now, I guess it's the latter, but on my first pass I wasn't sure. Too distracted by Luna's dream sequence. "Her Majesty suggests, while invading your dream, that you consider a new production that paints her more positively..." I can see that the author was going for a positive spin, but what's actually written pings me as highly uncomfortable, authoritarian, and directly threatening. The dissonance between that scene and its resolution in the waking world bugs me.
One way to resolve all this, albeit a difficult one, might be to cut the second half completely. Expand the play, make it the entire story, and use Luna's reaction at the ovation as a powerful ending. That moment already feels like the climax of the story, and is definitely the peak of emotional intensity, so why not own it? Everything that follows was already implied fairly well by Luna's disappointment and Pomade's reciprocity when he notices her, maybe we don't even need all that written out. The more I think about it, the more I think that would be the ideal form of this story.
Aside from that? Everything's great. Strong prose, great turns of phrase, great characterizations for the OCs. The piece is wonderfully descriptive and immersive, reads fantastically and draws me in. Absolutely stunning. A front runner on my slate as is, and a front page feature for FIMFic with some more top-level tinkering. Thanks for writing!
So I was just about ready to rip into this one and say that it should have kept its form, used iambic pentameter all the way through instead of just in dialogue, and cleaned up the language to be consistent and readable. Then the first scene ended and it turns out the play was, in fact, the thing. Got me good!
It's still kind of a problem, though, because that first scene as it stands feels very different and superfluous to the story that comes afterwards. Like... I get it, you did the play scene just to do the play scene and have it be fun to read. It's fanservice. Okay. Nothing wrong with some fanservice! But it might be better if it wasn't so transparently fanservice. Try and work in some more of the play's specifics later, to make it more important in the following story, or change the play scene a bit to include some groundwork for the later story.
Speaking of which... what is the later story? Luna talks to Pom (which I can't not read as Porn), and they reach an agreement to... do what? Alter the script or presentation somehow? Just write a whole new play about her redemption? Rereading now, I guess it's the latter, but on my first pass I wasn't sure. Too distracted by Luna's dream sequence. "Her Majesty suggests, while invading your dream, that you consider a new production that paints her more positively..." I can see that the author was going for a positive spin, but what's actually written pings me as highly uncomfortable, authoritarian, and directly threatening. The dissonance between that scene and its resolution in the waking world bugs me.
One way to resolve all this, albeit a difficult one, might be to cut the second half completely. Expand the play, make it the entire story, and use Luna's reaction at the ovation as a powerful ending. That moment already feels like the climax of the story, and is definitely the peak of emotional intensity, so why not own it? Everything that follows was already implied fairly well by Luna's disappointment and Pomade's reciprocity when he notices her, maybe we don't even need all that written out. The more I think about it, the more I think that would be the ideal form of this story.
Aside from that? Everything's great. Strong prose, great turns of phrase, great characterizations for the OCs. The piece is wonderfully descriptive and immersive, reads fantastically and draws me in. Absolutely stunning. A front runner on my slate as is, and a front page feature for FIMFic with some more top-level tinkering. Thanks for writing!
Well written (very well written!), but kind of lacking heart, I feel. Ultimately there isn't really much conflict, tension, or even much of an arc here for me to really sink my teeth into. Roughly speaking, Luna makes an oblique request and Pomade agrees. And that's kind of it. It doesn't feel like there were any real obstacles to this, and I don't really come away feeling like the characters really learned anything or changed in any way.
Basically, the meat here just doesn't satisfy. The stuff with Bloom? That was engaging and interesting. The conversation with Luna? Eeeeeeh.
Basically, the meat here just doesn't satisfy. The stuff with Bloom? That was engaging and interesting. The conversation with Luna? Eeeeeeh.
As with others, review-as-reaction to start with during my read through...
Intro is sufficiently "epic."
Uh oh, poetry sections.
Annnnnd we'e got a rap battle.
Okay, this is feeling like if Shakespeare directed a heavy metal video.
Oh god, what awful zebra curse is making everypony speak in rhyme?
"I have condemned her to oblivion,
And in so doing have myself been damn'd.
My heart is rent asunder, and you would name
This pain, this gaping wound, a victory?"
No, not heavy metal, an Evanescence video. Gag me!
Oh thank god, it's a play! Some respect for the author is returning.
Okay, getting real vibes of Birdman here... which is good.
"Bring champagne and orange juice, and we'll see. I'll need at least three mimosas in my system to stomach your touch that early." Nice line, definitely made me smirk.
Dream sequence... I hope. Working so far.
We know Luna dreamwalks, having her overly explain it to Pomade (while technically correct for him maybe) slows the story here.
"You were the mare in the audience!" this is also obvious to the reader.
Some nice visuals as they walk and talk.
"Luna cuffed Pomade across the ear," that feels way out of character for her.
Luna's explanation of coming to play is overly telling vs. showing.
""Why, Pomade," she tittered." and yeah, that's contrary to how she smacked him earlier. This has also gone on far too long just to say "show me in a better light, please."
The ending is a bit of a pointless wrap-up here.
Okay, overall, the opening was a BIG risk, at least to me. This really felt like overwrought blather, or self-important teenage goth poetry, which in this fandom, is something that happens more often than we probably want to admit. Had I been reading this on fimfic without other knowledge, I would've quit before the reveal that it was in a play, because the thought of enduring an entire story with that level of melodrama is a no-go for me.
That said, once I got going, this mostly worked for me. I think it's a little longer than it needs to be though, and I'd like to see a little less info dumping from Luna in the dream segment, and a little more of Pomade's character, especially his interactions with bloom, which were witty and charming on both sides.
Intro is sufficiently "epic."
Uh oh, poetry sections.
Annnnnd we'e got a rap battle.
Okay, this is feeling like if Shakespeare directed a heavy metal video.
Oh god, what awful zebra curse is making everypony speak in rhyme?
"I have condemned her to oblivion,
And in so doing have myself been damn'd.
My heart is rent asunder, and you would name
This pain, this gaping wound, a victory?"
No, not heavy metal, an Evanescence video. Gag me!
Oh thank god, it's a play! Some respect for the author is returning.
Okay, getting real vibes of Birdman here... which is good.
"Bring champagne and orange juice, and we'll see. I'll need at least three mimosas in my system to stomach your touch that early." Nice line, definitely made me smirk.
Dream sequence... I hope. Working so far.
We know Luna dreamwalks, having her overly explain it to Pomade (while technically correct for him maybe) slows the story here.
"You were the mare in the audience!" this is also obvious to the reader.
Some nice visuals as they walk and talk.
"Luna cuffed Pomade across the ear," that feels way out of character for her.
Luna's explanation of coming to play is overly telling vs. showing.
""Why, Pomade," she tittered." and yeah, that's contrary to how she smacked him earlier. This has also gone on far too long just to say "show me in a better light, please."
The ending is a bit of a pointless wrap-up here.
Okay, overall, the opening was a BIG risk, at least to me. This really felt like overwrought blather, or self-important teenage goth poetry, which in this fandom, is something that happens more often than we probably want to admit. Had I been reading this on fimfic without other knowledge, I would've quit before the reveal that it was in a play, because the thought of enduring an entire story with that level of melodrama is a no-go for me.
That said, once I got going, this mostly worked for me. I think it's a little longer than it needs to be though, and I'd like to see a little less info dumping from Luna in the dream segment, and a little more of Pomade's character, especially his interactions with bloom, which were witty and charming on both sides.
As impressive as your poetic opening is, I have trouble applauding it, because it does very little for the story overall.
Sure, it's incredibly well done, but... structurally, you're pulling a bait-and-switch (starting the story twice) for no real reason. Narrative-wise, none of the elements introduced there are used later; even the play's big departure from canon (that Luna back-stabbed Celestia) needed a later recap, because what the story later addresses isn't in this part of the play.
I dunno. I mean, I really, really want to give you props for the poetry and presentation, because I was legit prepared to read 8k of Shakesdeer and maybe even enjoy it, but... I had to re-orient to a totally different story after just a scene.
Maybe I'm being unnecessarily harsh here. While I do think the words you've used there aren't pulling their weight, it does lend a sense of gravitas to this playwright's work, and the presentation really does sell Pomade as a talented director; your skill shadowing his skill, as it were. :P
Well, I'd argue you could probably achieve the same effect in a third the words, but maybe not. And that would also cramp the poetry, which was nice. /shrug.
Anyways, on to the rest. I do like the ideas here; your characters are presented as nuanced and realistic, and both Luna and Pomade come across crisply. The dreamscape is surreal but clear, and some of the details were wonderful. (Gold star! Spinning the rings on the planet.) However, I'm again a little disappointed by how the gist of this story is handed over with a straight-up monologue. Any hints of tension were quickly defused through reasonable discussion, which is, admittedly, a credit to your characters, but I found this somewhat... less than compelling.
This kinda feels like a wax fruit; beautifully presented and polished, but when you bite it, there's nothing there.
I feel like I've said it before; I prefer badly polished but ambitious stories to polished bland ones... but then I look back to the poetry, and I'm like "this is totally ambitious!" but I come around again and I'm like "but it's not doing anything for the narrative!"
I dunno. I'm going to have a bit of trouble scoring this one, I think. The extreme dichotomy between the two parts, and the fact that they're not meshed nearly as hard as I'd like to see, is going to have me bouncing this up and down my rankings for a bit. On the one hand, I really want to give this some credit for all it does right, even if I feel like that's mostly on a surface level. On the other hand, I feel like there are deep systemic flaws here, holding it back from being so much more.
Was this started with the intent to write a poetic epic, but switched halfway through due to lack of time?
I feel like I got a little ranty there. Hopefully something I said is useful to you. I did enjoy this a lot, even if I'm not really sure what to do with it.
Sure, it's incredibly well done, but... structurally, you're pulling a bait-and-switch (starting the story twice) for no real reason. Narrative-wise, none of the elements introduced there are used later; even the play's big departure from canon (that Luna back-stabbed Celestia) needed a later recap, because what the story later addresses isn't in this part of the play.
I dunno. I mean, I really, really want to give you props for the poetry and presentation, because I was legit prepared to read 8k of Shakesdeer and maybe even enjoy it, but... I had to re-orient to a totally different story after just a scene.
Maybe I'm being unnecessarily harsh here. While I do think the words you've used there aren't pulling their weight, it does lend a sense of gravitas to this playwright's work, and the presentation really does sell Pomade as a talented director; your skill shadowing his skill, as it were. :P
Well, I'd argue you could probably achieve the same effect in a third the words, but maybe not. And that would also cramp the poetry, which was nice. /shrug.
Anyways, on to the rest. I do like the ideas here; your characters are presented as nuanced and realistic, and both Luna and Pomade come across crisply. The dreamscape is surreal but clear, and some of the details were wonderful. (Gold star! Spinning the rings on the planet.) However, I'm again a little disappointed by how the gist of this story is handed over with a straight-up monologue. Any hints of tension were quickly defused through reasonable discussion, which is, admittedly, a credit to your characters, but I found this somewhat... less than compelling.
This kinda feels like a wax fruit; beautifully presented and polished, but when you bite it, there's nothing there.
I feel like I've said it before; I prefer badly polished but ambitious stories to polished bland ones... but then I look back to the poetry, and I'm like "this is totally ambitious!" but I come around again and I'm like "but it's not doing anything for the narrative!"
I dunno. I'm going to have a bit of trouble scoring this one, I think. The extreme dichotomy between the two parts, and the fact that they're not meshed nearly as hard as I'd like to see, is going to have me bouncing this up and down my rankings for a bit. On the one hand, I really want to give this some credit for all it does right, even if I feel like that's mostly on a surface level. On the other hand, I feel like there are deep systemic flaws here, holding it back from being so much more.
Was this started with the intent to write a poetic epic, but switched halfway through due to lack of time?
I feel like I got a little ranty there. Hopefully something I said is useful to you. I did enjoy this a lot, even if I'm not really sure what to do with it.
The Retrospective Macabre
Let me first express my disappointment that nobody besides Andrew correctly guessed that this was me, despite all the signature elements which should have given away my authorship. There are two things I'm known for: giant eyeballs and gratuitous Shakespeare references, and both were present in this fic. Did anyone pick up on them? No. Y'all gotta learn, I'm not the Scratchtavia guy, the Sunset Shimmer guy, or the Equestria Girls guy; I'm the Eyeballs and Shakespeare guy. C'mon.
Okay, that's out of the way. So.
I don't say this often, but I really wish I could've had this one back. Usually, when I write what I feel is a sub-par writeoff entry, it's because I think that either the concept or my ability to competently execute said concept are fundamentally broken. This was a rare instance where I had absolute confidence in my idea, but failed to write it effectively, not because of incompetence, but because of constraints outside my ability to control. I wrote this in a few hours, staying up late on a night that I couldn't afford to stay up late, having already spent most of my allotted writing time working on a different manuscript that left me too burned out to do much prewriting for this one. I was working right up against the deadline (those Shakesdeerian passages, alone, took me two and a half hours), with a wireless connection that has gone out of its way to frustrate me for the last several weeks, with minimal time to revise and edit, or even proofread. The end result?
A story which didn't meet my expectations.
I'm pleased so many people liked it, but I can't help thinking how much more you'd have liked it, how much better it would have been, if I'd taken more time to explore it. Or even to articulate more than half the stuff that I wanted it to include. There were numerous elements that I wanted to work in, that I had the space to work in, but not the time needed to really make them shine, so all you get is some neat imagery and dialogue, and a conflict that flops around before abruptly resolving with little effort. It sucks.
Take the OCs, for example. So many people praised the character work in this story, which is weird to me, because I considered that one of the story's greatest shortcomings. There were elements to Pomade Well's character that I simply didn't have the time to articulate in the story. For instance, the reason he's so egotistical and thin-skinned: he's the illegitimate son of a prostitute, and he's spent his entire adult life trying to distance himself from that fact. He had a cruel nickname, too, something Luna would point out when trying to establish a dialogue with him: Whoreson. Whoreson Well. It was supposed to be a pun on Orson Welles. Likewise, "Blooming Garland" is supposed to be a reference to Judy Garland, but without Pomade's epithet, the context for her own name-pun isn't there, so it falls... flat.
The conversation with Luna would have been more contentious, too, with her momentarily losing her patience and snapping at Pomade. The two would eventually reach a little common ground, with Pomade realizing that Luna's also struggled to distance herself from a negative image, which helps to inspire his decision at the end of the story.
But all of that ended up on the cutting room floor, to my disappointment. C'est la vie.
Let's get some responses out of the way:
>>CoffeeMinion
>>Novel_Idea
I think you're both right in your assessments here. The story, like Pomade himself, never reaches a climax.
oh, someone stop me. :D
Speaking of climaxes, CoffeeDad, I didn't think the tail-thing was quite that flirtatious... when I wrote it... but on rereading it, yeah, it's probably the sauciest thing I've ever written a pony doing. Not counting that scene in Jelly God where Rainbow Dash abruptly asks Twilight if she can play around underneath her tail for a while, and Twilight says yes, but only if she does the thing with the rubber chicken again.
>>Ranmilia
Heh, it may come as a surprise, but I'm in no way an expert at writing Shakespearean verse, and as I said earlier, what little is in here took me about a third of the total time I spent writing the story. I would not be able to swing an entire story written in iambic pentameter. I can applaud myself for doing so functionally, but it's lacking the florid elegance of the Bard's work.
The play was supposed to come back into the mix during the scene with Luna; she would have summoned up a copy of the play and started reciting a monologue patterned after Richard Lancaster's opening soliloquy in Richard III. There would also, incidentally, have been some backstory given for the play, indicating that Shakesdeere wrote it with the intent of currying favor with Celestia and nabbing a place in court, with her as his patron. The play was successful, and has enduring popularity, but Celestia never attended a performance, the implication being that she disapproved of how it portrayed her sister. Which would also have been a historical in-joke, as Richard III, along with some of Shakespeare's other plays, was written to curry favor with the crown by upgrading a historical figure to full-on evil villain status.
That part was cut. And it hurt to cut it out.
I had the same thought as I was planning the story; that was exactly what I didn't want Luna to do, and I didn't want her to come across that way. Luna's motivations aren't to get a propaganda piece out of Pomade; she doesn't want him to write something that paints her in an explicitly positive light, but one that shows her for who she is: someone who fucked up, was cast down, and sought to make amends for her crimes. She's made peace with her past as Nightmare Moon, and doesn't think it's something that should be forgotten.
But she doesn't want that to be the only thing people know her for, and deep down, she's afraid that's all anyone ever will know her for. She wants people at large to know the Luna that the CMC and Twilight and her friends get to know, but is too withdrawn and awkward to do the leg-work herself.
I think "A Royal Problem" proved that much, at least. :P
>>Xepher
...I mean, I know I said I'm no expert, but damn, man. That actually hurt my feelings a little...
That's knowledge the reader is privy to, yes, but not something Pomade would know off the bat. I think it makes sense for him to be shown making these connections and speaking them out loud.
Though I agree that I could at least trim down the amount of exposition Luna delivers.
I like playing around with fandom cliches and tropes when I write. "THE STORY OF NIGHTMARE MOON :D" has been done to death, in every single way imaginable. So one of my ideas when writing this was to play around with that kind of premise, and to intentionally evoke the kind of melodramatic angstiness one would expect to find in that kind of story.
(Your "Evanescence" remark was more or less on the money, but still, ow, man).
But I see your point, and as >>Not_A_Hat points out, it's a bait-and-switch when the story doesn't need one. I don't mind indicating to the reader that the scene's taking place in someone's imagination sooner than I do.
...And I don't actually have anything to say in response to Not_A_Hat, besides that. Sorry, man. It's because you keep lying, and insisting that you're not a hat, when you so clearly are one. It's like when Ebony Way gets upset over people calling her a slut, even when she so totally fucking isn't omfg66666666!!111.
I guess that's all I have to say here. Thank you all for reading, and I'm glad I could entertain you.But you're still all jerks.
Let me first express my disappointment that nobody besides Andrew correctly guessed that this was me, despite all the signature elements which should have given away my authorship. There are two things I'm known for: giant eyeballs and gratuitous Shakespeare references, and both were present in this fic. Did anyone pick up on them? No. Y'all gotta learn, I'm not the Scratchtavia guy, the Sunset Shimmer guy, or the Equestria Girls guy; I'm the Eyeballs and Shakespeare guy. C'mon.
Okay, that's out of the way. So.
I don't say this often, but I really wish I could've had this one back. Usually, when I write what I feel is a sub-par writeoff entry, it's because I think that either the concept or my ability to competently execute said concept are fundamentally broken. This was a rare instance where I had absolute confidence in my idea, but failed to write it effectively, not because of incompetence, but because of constraints outside my ability to control. I wrote this in a few hours, staying up late on a night that I couldn't afford to stay up late, having already spent most of my allotted writing time working on a different manuscript that left me too burned out to do much prewriting for this one. I was working right up against the deadline (those Shakesdeerian passages, alone, took me two and a half hours), with a wireless connection that has gone out of its way to frustrate me for the last several weeks, with minimal time to revise and edit, or even proofread. The end result?
A story which didn't meet my expectations.
I'm pleased so many people liked it, but I can't help thinking how much more you'd have liked it, how much better it would have been, if I'd taken more time to explore it. Or even to articulate more than half the stuff that I wanted it to include. There were numerous elements that I wanted to work in, that I had the space to work in, but not the time needed to really make them shine, so all you get is some neat imagery and dialogue, and a conflict that flops around before abruptly resolving with little effort. It sucks.
Take the OCs, for example. So many people praised the character work in this story, which is weird to me, because I considered that one of the story's greatest shortcomings. There were elements to Pomade Well's character that I simply didn't have the time to articulate in the story. For instance, the reason he's so egotistical and thin-skinned: he's the illegitimate son of a prostitute, and he's spent his entire adult life trying to distance himself from that fact. He had a cruel nickname, too, something Luna would point out when trying to establish a dialogue with him: Whoreson. Whoreson Well. It was supposed to be a pun on Orson Welles. Likewise, "Blooming Garland" is supposed to be a reference to Judy Garland, but without Pomade's epithet, the context for her own name-pun isn't there, so it falls... flat.
The conversation with Luna would have been more contentious, too, with her momentarily losing her patience and snapping at Pomade. The two would eventually reach a little common ground, with Pomade realizing that Luna's also struggled to distance herself from a negative image, which helps to inspire his decision at the end of the story.
But all of that ended up on the cutting room floor, to my disappointment. C'est la vie.
Let's get some responses out of the way:
>>CoffeeMinion
So why am I leaning more toward Strong rather than Top Contender with this mofo? Well, to be honest, the central conversation between Starmare and Slick Top feels strongly reminiscent of the CMC conversations it's structured after and which it references. This is something where I struggle to point at any one thing and say it's bad; more like, in a fic full of brilliance and overwhelmingly awesome potential, that feels like it needs to be the biggest moment, and right now I don't quite feel like it lives up to that full potential for me. Maybe it's just too reminiscent of those past conversations. Maybe I don't quite buy that Slick Top is persuaded to do the thing he talks about doing at the end. Or maybe it feels a bit anticlimactic having him end with just talking about doing the thing, even though I actually like the conversation he has there with Tail Lady.
>>Novel_Idea
I'm really not sure what to think of this story. I loved the characters. Pomade and Garland were both brilliantly done. I admit, I loved Garland's sultry vibe and the back and forth between them. That was simply magnificent. Luna's characterization was also spot-on. The characters really drove the story for this. However... I can't help but feel a little let down by the ending. What bugs me is I can't put my finger on why.
I think you're both right in your assessments here. The story, like Pomade himself, never reaches a climax.
oh, someone stop me. :D
Speaking of climaxes, CoffeeDad, I didn't think the tail-thing was quite that flirtatious... when I wrote it... but on rereading it, yeah, it's probably the sauciest thing I've ever written a pony doing. Not counting that scene in Jelly God where Rainbow Dash abruptly asks Twilight if she can play around underneath her tail for a while, and Twilight says yes, but only if she does the thing with the rubber chicken again.
>>Ranmilia
So I was just about ready to rip into this one and say that it should have kept its form, used iambic pentameter all the way through instead of just in dialogue, and cleaned up the language to be consistent and readable. Then the first scene ended and it turns out the play was, in fact, the thing. Got me good!
It's still kind of a problem, though, because that first scene as it stands feels very different and superfluous to the story that comes afterwards. Like... I get it, you did the play scene just to do the play scene and have it be fun to read. It's fanservice. Okay. Nothing wrong with some fanservice! But it might be better if it wasn't so transparently fanservice. Try and work in some more of the play's specifics later, to make it more important in the following story, or change the play scene a bit to include some groundwork for the later story.
Heh, it may come as a surprise, but I'm in no way an expert at writing Shakespearean verse, and as I said earlier, what little is in here took me about a third of the total time I spent writing the story. I would not be able to swing an entire story written in iambic pentameter. I can applaud myself for doing so functionally, but it's lacking the florid elegance of the Bard's work.
The play was supposed to come back into the mix during the scene with Luna; she would have summoned up a copy of the play and started reciting a monologue patterned after Richard Lancaster's opening soliloquy in Richard III. There would also, incidentally, have been some backstory given for the play, indicating that Shakesdeere wrote it with the intent of currying favor with Celestia and nabbing a place in court, with her as his patron. The play was successful, and has enduring popularity, but Celestia never attended a performance, the implication being that she disapproved of how it portrayed her sister. Which would also have been a historical in-joke, as Richard III, along with some of Shakespeare's other plays, was written to curry favor with the crown by upgrading a historical figure to full-on evil villain status.
That part was cut. And it hurt to cut it out.
"Her Majesty suggests, while invading your dream, that you consider a new production that paints her more positively..." I can see that the author was going for a positive spin, but what's actually written pings me as highly uncomfortable, authoritarian, and directly threatening.
I had the same thought as I was planning the story; that was exactly what I didn't want Luna to do, and I didn't want her to come across that way. Luna's motivations aren't to get a propaganda piece out of Pomade; she doesn't want him to write something that paints her in an explicitly positive light, but one that shows her for who she is: someone who fucked up, was cast down, and sought to make amends for her crimes. She's made peace with her past as Nightmare Moon, and doesn't think it's something that should be forgotten.
But she doesn't want that to be the only thing people know her for, and deep down, she's afraid that's all anyone ever will know her for. She wants people at large to know the Luna that the CMC and Twilight and her friends get to know, but is too withdrawn and awkward to do the leg-work herself.
I think "A Royal Problem" proved that much, at least. :P
>>Xepher
No, not heavy metal, an Evanescence video. Gag me!
...I mean, I know I said I'm no expert, but damn, man. That actually hurt my feelings a little...
We know Luna dreamwalks, having her overly explain it to Pomade (while technically correct for him maybe) slows the story here.
"You were the mare in the audience!" this is also obvious to the reader.
That's knowledge the reader is privy to, yes, but not something Pomade would know off the bat. I think it makes sense for him to be shown making these connections and speaking them out loud.
Though I agree that I could at least trim down the amount of exposition Luna delivers.
Okay, overall, the opening was a BIG risk, at least to me. This really felt like overwrought blather, or self-important teenage goth poetry, which in this fandom, is something that happens more often than we probably want to admit. Had I been reading this on fimfic without other knowledge, I would've quit before the reveal that it was in a play, because the thought of enduring an entire story with that level of melodrama is a no-go for me.
I like playing around with fandom cliches and tropes when I write. "THE STORY OF NIGHTMARE MOON :D" has been done to death, in every single way imaginable. So one of my ideas when writing this was to play around with that kind of premise, and to intentionally evoke the kind of melodramatic angstiness one would expect to find in that kind of story.
(Your "Evanescence" remark was more or less on the money, but still, ow, man).
But I see your point, and as >>Not_A_Hat points out, it's a bait-and-switch when the story doesn't need one. I don't mind indicating to the reader that the scene's taking place in someone's imagination sooner than I do.
...And I don't actually have anything to say in response to Not_A_Hat, besides that. Sorry, man. It's because you keep lying, and insisting that you're not a hat, when you so clearly are one. It's like when Ebony Way gets upset over people calling her a slut, even when she so totally fucking isn't omfg66666666!!111.
I guess that's all I have to say here. Thank you all for reading, and I'm glad I could entertain you.
>>Posh
First off, would it help to know I put your story third on my slate? Seriously. And if I'd been allowed to rank my own story, I would've probably put it just slightly under yours. I genuinely liked this story by the end, and felt it edged out my own. The "harsh" things I said at the start were/are genuine though, but... by the end I judged the story of high enough quality that the author (anonymous at the time) should be able to take (and in fact deserves/needs) very blunt criticism. Had I not thought so highly of it, I would've edited my comments and pulled some punches. But I didn't, because this was good.
That said, I gave blunt reactions literally as-I-read, as I've found that is literally the most effective form of a feedback an author can get. I've been running the ORCs (open read and critique) sessions at the EFNW convention for... holy crap? More than half the life of this fandom? (/me is old.) New authors need coddling and encouragement, but good authors needs raw reactions and honest feedback.
Your poetry WAS very Shakespearian, which is to say "full of itself." I think it did exactly what you intended for it to do, but the danger is that without first telling us what the story itself is setting out to do, a reader may confuse that early part the the overall gist of the tale. Hence why I called it risky. It paid off, as you pulled it together into a tight story, but... moving this to fimfic, while keeping some "surprise" I would definitely consider giving the reader a hint slightly earlier that they're in a "scene" and not the stories full, 5k word reality. Honestly, a cover image alone may be enough, just something that hints at cardboard wings or whatever clue of a play you can think of.
All that said, I genuinely think this story deserved to place above my own, so thank you for writing and sharing!
First off, would it help to know I put your story third on my slate? Seriously. And if I'd been allowed to rank my own story, I would've probably put it just slightly under yours. I genuinely liked this story by the end, and felt it edged out my own. The "harsh" things I said at the start were/are genuine though, but... by the end I judged the story of high enough quality that the author (anonymous at the time) should be able to take (and in fact deserves/needs) very blunt criticism. Had I not thought so highly of it, I would've edited my comments and pulled some punches. But I didn't, because this was good.
That said, I gave blunt reactions literally as-I-read, as I've found that is literally the most effective form of a feedback an author can get. I've been running the ORCs (open read and critique) sessions at the EFNW convention for... holy crap? More than half the life of this fandom? (/me is old.) New authors need coddling and encouragement, but good authors needs raw reactions and honest feedback.
Your poetry WAS very Shakespearian, which is to say "full of itself." I think it did exactly what you intended for it to do, but the danger is that without first telling us what the story itself is setting out to do, a reader may confuse that early part the the overall gist of the tale. Hence why I called it risky. It paid off, as you pulled it together into a tight story, but... moving this to fimfic, while keeping some "surprise" I would definitely consider giving the reader a hint slightly earlier that they're in a "scene" and not the stories full, 5k word reality. Honestly, a cover image alone may be enough, just something that hints at cardboard wings or whatever clue of a play you can think of.
All that said, I genuinely think this story deserved to place above my own, so thank you for writing and sharing!
>>Posh
You know, there's just something right about a tangentially-Shakespearean character with a nickname of "whoreson." +10 genre points, thou stale! :-p
You know, there's just something right about a tangentially-Shakespearean character with a nickname of "whoreson." +10 genre points, thou stale! :-p