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On the Verge · FiM Short Story ·
Organised by RogerDodger
Word limit 2000–8000
Show rules for this event
Little Dark Age
You can only run from your nightmares for so long. Luna knew that better than anypony else. She was Nightmare Moon, after all. The spectre of those thousands of years of loneliness hung over her, pressing against the edges of her mind. Most days, medication and meditation did enough to keep those memories at bay. Others? It was a miracle she could leave her bed at all. If she wasn’t a princess, if the rising of the moon and the movement of the tides didn’t rest on a flick of her horn, it was hard to say for certain whether she would still be here at all.

Then again, if she wasn't a princess, this never would have been a problem. Her imprisonment, her cruelty upon release, her eventual defeat at the hooves of a group of ponies who she now counted among her friends… Regular ponies didn’t need to worry about this kind of thing. That was another nightmare of hers—being just a normal pony in an extraordinary circumstance, left completely powerless. It was hard to tell which was worse.

Tonight was standard, really. She awoke to find her hooves longer tangled in her sheets, instead contending with the harsh cold of the moons’ surface. There was no atmosphere here, no sound or warmth to soothe her bones. It was a wonder that she was able to survive at all. Nightmare Moon dominated the horizon, her body massive in size as she stretched languidly across the pale rock. Luna could see the rise and fall of her chest as she breathed, her eyes closed as if sleeping. She didn’t remember sleeping when she was Nightmare Moon.

The scene would be peaceful if it wasn’t for the thick scars that danced across the Nightmare’s chest. They were rough pictograms, as if some prehistoric pony had come across a new spot for cave painting. It was old Equestrian in design, recounting her fall from grace as the youngest of the twin Princesses. It was a tale she was intimately familiar with. So odd to find that your only noteworthy appearance in history textbooks was as a villain in your sisters story.

Her attention was wrested away from her idle thoughts as the skin just below Nightmare’s coat began to writhe. She could see a horned pony press against their fleshy prison and Luna squeezed her eyes shut in anticipation. She was used to gore at this point but that didn’t mean she was keen on seeing any more of it.

See it she would as her eyes wrenched open just as straining skin began to split and part. Like a flower blossoming, the pony in front of her emerged wet with gore. They stumbled into the open space, a wicked grin on their face. Shaking the worst of the viscera off they stood to their full height, a good few heads taller than Luna. Against the lifeless gray of the moon the pony was a stark contrast, all deep blues and near-blacks.

“Nightmare.”

“Luna, darling. How long has it been since we’ve talked?”

“I believe a month or so. Your entrances usually aren’t so theatrical. Have you grown lonely without me?” She no longer feared Nightmare Moon, for Nightmare Moon no longer existed in this world. This was a figment, a construction of her guilty mind intended to torture her. Unlike the Tantabus, it had no power here or anywhere else. Still, it was hard not to feel nervous around her.

“Lonely? Darling, I never got lonely. Not even over a thousand empty, achingly long years. Not like you did. Do you remember that? The way you used to cower in your little sanctuary, the one place I could never reach?” Luna rolled her eyes. She knew the Nightmare, knew her feelings well. The loneliness bit them both harder than they’d like to admit.

“Why do you think I’m here standing in front of you, you daft bitch? OF COURSE I REMEMBER!” Did Nightmare shirk at her voice? Well… Good. She was tired of being antagonized by her own mind. She pressed a hoof against her head and closed her eyes in an attempt to gather her thoughts. “Just. What do you want? Can’t I just appreciate the view?”

“What, my corpse behind me? You see my dead body enough in your other nightmares so I was thinking a change of pace might be nice.” The scene around them shifted. The massive body of Nightmare Moon in front of her warped and changed, bending itself into deep red stage curtains. The moon faded away and her hooves found themselves on solid oak flooring now. To her left were two stools and a small table, a tinny gramophone playing one of her favorite songs just out of tune.

“This is new. I’ve never done a stage show before.” Luna looked away from the stage itself into where she half-expected rows of seats to be. Instead she was met by an inky black void, an endless emptiness yawning in front of her. Typical.

“You’ve progressed so well with hiding from your feelings that you’ve forced us to get much more creative with our torment.” Her and Nightmare were sitting now, the gramophone between them still squawking out its awkward song.

“Torment?” Luna gestured around to the empty theater and threw her head back in laughter. It was hollow, devoid of joy. Just like this miserable display she was being subjected to. “This is torment to you? Nightmare, you sweet fool, we have not had stage fright for a millennia. You’re going to have to try harder.”

“Do you think you’re doing a good job fooling them?”

“What?” Luna snapped her head back to Nightmare, scowling.

“Your friends. Do you truly think they’re buying your whole charade?” Nightmare Moon’s voice lacked any of its typical venom. Indeed her whole demeanor was bereft of any of her trademark aggression. She reminded Luna an awful lot of herself like this.

“There is no charade, Nightmare. I am me around them and they accept me as I am. That is all, nothing more and nothing less. This is the nature of friendship. You wouldn’t understand.”

“Would I not? I’ve lived in your little head for your entire life, from the moment the moons’ image graced your flanks. I’ve been with you every step of the way, through all your ups and downs. Is that not friendship? Do I not understand us?”

“There is not an us! There never was. You were a thief, a craven animal that lodged itself into the head of a filly that didn’t know any better. Do not speak of us as friends, monster.”

“It’s never going to leave you. You know this, right? The fear, the sting of failure, the desire for more—it’s a part of you. Just as [i]I[/] am a part of you. Hiding won’t make it go away.”

Luna scoffed and her nostrils flared. This was ridiculous. “I’m not hiding from anything. Here I am, sitting in front of the singular source of my woes, and she claims that I’m hiding! That I’m trying to run away from my problems!”

It was only in the heavy pause that followed that Luna realized the music had stopped playing. She would take even its’ shaky attempts at recreating a familiar song over this. She could hear her heart hammering in her chest. What was she afraid of? “Am I wrong? Is there not some iota of truth in the words I speak? If there weren’t, why would you be feeling the way you are now?”

Luna sighed, waving dismissively at Nightmare like a fly on a summer afternoon. She concentrated on her magic and pulled the dream in around her, dragging herself into the waking world. “We’re done talking here, Nightmare.”



She was back in bed, safe and sound. No Nightmare Moon, no empty stage, no uncomfortable questions. Just the sleeping body of Twilight Sparkle. Luna thought it thrilling when they first eloped. The scandal of it all! Their relationship didn’t even make the tabloids. Nowadays that sort of concern seemed silly to her but she was so desperate to be admired or even noticed by her public that she would do anything catch their eye but sometimes… sometimes that wasn’t the path life had chosen for you.

She had been noticed by the ponies that mattered most to her and that was enough. Luna gave Twilight one last squeeze before pulling herself out of bed. Twilight grumbled in her sleep at the sudden departure of warmth from her grasp but she would get over it in time. Luna made her way to the window to gaze upon her work. Strange, she didn’t remember the moon being full tonight…

“Oh sweet summer skies.”

Luna wanted to scream, she wanted to howl in wordless anguish. Hanging in the night sky, in place of the beautiful moon, was the gutted corpse of Nightmare Moon. Did she have to be so cliche? Did she have to make it so hard to run? Luna growled in frustration and the aging stone railing beneath her front hooves began to crumble. She whirled around, startled to find Twilight standing there.

This wasn’t the real Twilight. “Luna, dearest, is something wrong?”

“It’s—it’s just a dream, dear. Just another lousy nightmare. Let’s go back to bed so I can forget this ever happened.” Luna trudged towards the comfort of her covers, stopping in her tracks at the edge of her bed.

Splayed out in all her visceral glory was Princess Twilight Sparkle. She had been rent from throat to loin by magic and she was—there was so much of her and—Luna couldn’t help but vomit. She spat in contempt as the wave of disgust passed over her. Twilight’s eyes flickered to life in response and a familiar smile found its way onto her muzzle.

“It almost seems that you care for her, little fang. Don’t you feel wrong lying to her?” To hear that voice coming from the dead body of her loved one was almost enough to drive Luna to rampage. Almost.

“Get. Out. Of. My. Head.” Luna trembled, her body seething with a thousand years of rage at her captor. Body wearer. Crown stealer. Nightmare.

The bloodied head of her love cackled with violent glee. “Me? Get out of your head? You put me here! Like you put us on the moon! Like you almost put your sister in the grave! Like you—”

Luna smashed the bed into splinters with pure magical fury. Nay, less than splinters. The bed was nearly wiped clean from the dreamscape in the responding magical blast. Luna roared, deep and primal against the flames that were starting to consume her room. She roared still as the flames grew closer, threatening to envelop her. She only stopped roaring when a deep blue hoof wrenched her from her nightmare.



There they were, at the end of it all. At least this is what her sickly mind thought the end would look like. The skyline looked beautiful on fire, all twisted metal stretching upwards. The earth screamed in torment. She stood in Canterlot, in the spot where her and Celestia would have lived. Instead there was nothing but scorched earth and patches of worn rubble. She didn’t care to know which future this was. They all ended the same after all. The death of Harmony, the ascendancy of some other Element, the rebirth of Harmony through Strife, the suppression of all Elements that oppose Harmony—she had memories of it all.

“It’s hard, isn’t it? Coming face to face with the type of destruction your kind is capable of wreaking? To confront the reality of y—”

“Can you shut up? Please. Just for a moment.” She was talking to a deck of playing cards. It wasn’t the most outrageous thing she had to deal with tonight but it was certainly an odd choice of form. The faces on the cards rolled their eyes.

Luna was content to let the carnage sing to her for a few minutes, soaking in the desolation of the scene around her. It carried an odd peace with it. It was different than the moon or a stage or a dead lover. This was a reality somewhere. The moon, her physical presence on it, was never real. She had never set hoof on stage since she was a filly. Twilight would die by other means, the oracles assured her of that much. Her death would serve a far greater purpose than some angsty scene lit by only the pale light of the night.

“How are you okay with any of this? You seem so at peace. We don’t like it.” The voice in the cards was confused, upset. Stupid.

“Yes, well, you’re going to have to get used to it. I am more at peace than I have been in centuries and someday—” Luna turned to face the table where the cards sat, hardly sparing a glance at Nightmare Moon “someday I will leave you behind.”

Nightmare Moon snorted, incredulous at such a statement. She seemed to doubt that anypony could ever live without her presence. “You jest, surely! You call this recovery?” Nightmare gestured around them, at the death and destruction ostensibly caused by her own hooves. “This is not recovery, Luna. This is more of the same.”

Luna sighed, leaning her head back to stare blankly into the smog-choked air. Having conversations with herself grew to be so tiresome. “That’s what recovery is. It’s getting better, little by little, in ways that you can’t recognize until you look back many moons later. I am better. I’m getting better every day. I will not stop for anything because I want this. I deserve to want this.”

Nightmare Moon scoffed, rising from her spread-leg position in the chair to sit beside Luna. They admired the vista in silence for what felt like years, letting the wail of a dying planet soothe their battered minds. “Do you think I could ever get better?”

Luna turned to herself and smiled, the first smile she would wear tonight. “I think we already have.”
Pics
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#1 ·
· · >>CoffeeMinion
Lots of little problems:

Jump out at me. The very first word, for instance, establishes a narrator, a character who is addressing me directly and telling me the story. But that doesn't happen: the rest of the story is just a regular 3rd person narrative. I kept expecting a sort of Portnoy's Complaint ending where it turns out Luna is telling all this to Twilight or a psychiatrist or something. A couple lines later, the phrase "thousands of years of loneliness" also confused me. Luna only spent one thousand years on the moon. So was she lonely for another thousand years before the Nightmare Moon Incident? Or is this story set a thousand after her return, and she's been lonely all that time?

The third paragraph tells us there's no atmosphere on the moon, and yet Luna watches the giant Nightmare Moon of her dream breathing. How exactly does that work? When Nightmare bursts out of her own chest, we're told that Luna "was used to gore at this point", but later Luna says to her, "Your entrances usually aren’t so theatrical." So she usually does something that's gory but not theatrical? Is that possible? And near the end: "The scandal of it all! Their relationship didn’t even make the tabloids." Can something be a scandal if nobody knows about it?

The story itself is an interesting take on the "Luna confronts Nightmare" genre, but I'd like a little more resolution at the end—have Luna finally wake up so we can see what her true situation is or use the narrative structure you set up at the beginning to have Luna telling somepony all this or something—and it definitely needs another pass through the word processor.

Mike
#2 · 1
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First, story stuff.

So, Nightmare emerged from herself? I'm not sure I follow this.

I think the theme of the story could be a little more coherent. I don't understand what Nightmare represents to Luna psychologically. Why is she tormenting herself this way? How is this different from the Tantabus, apart from it not being magical in nature? What is her subconscious mind attempting to do here? It isn't clear to me. Your subconscious doesn't seek to torture you. That's the opposite of what dreams do for you, even nightmares. They're built to decouple emotional connections from memories so you can move forward.

Since the dreams are not necessarily connected to reality (the last dream for an obvious point), I'm left uncertain as to whether Luna did, or did not, elope with Twilight Sparkle.

I don't quite buy the ending yet. All of a sudden, Luna's fine. How did this happen? What was she thinking or deciding that led to her character growth?

I'm not sure Luna having no control in the realm of dreams is believable. Perhaps she should willingly remain within the dream because she is determined to learn from it.

Now, writing stuff.

This prose is super telly. You need to focus on showing us what Luna looks like, and allow the reader the latitude to determine what this means for her emotional and psychological state. The dialogue is also a little telly in places when you use it for exposition. Sometimes that's okay, but in other places it doesn't feel natural for Luna to directly describe things that happened to her in the past when she argues with herself.

Showing is something you should really push yourself to do. Even when you are showing details, you have a tendency to hoof-wave it a little. I don't know if it's a fear of trusting the reader, or a fear of trusting yourself to do it well. But, for example, when you describe the gore, you have an opportunity to paint with reds, and you don't take it. Instead you say "there's some gore and viscera". You don't have to get super graphic to show gore, and you can still speak poetically, "rivulets of red" instead of "blood" is fine if that mutes the rating. But you really need to work on painting a detailed picture and giving up control over the value judgments to the audience. Showiness is a very difficult thing to do, but it's the soul of good writing.

It should be "younger of", not "youngest of", and "sister's story" rather than "sisters".

EDIT: "Twilight would die by other means, the oracles assured her of that much." What is this about? I feel I'm missing out on important details here, as the reader. Invite me in.
#3 · 3
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Genre: Dream Warriors

Thoughts: I’ll be honest, I didn’t think this was going to come together quite as well as it does in the end. I feel like there are lots of little things (as >>Baal Bunny noted) that cause this to stumble as it goes. A tale told entirely inside the dreamscape is risky anyway, because there’s a certain arbitrariness to the way everything works and flows, which is governed by the “controlling” dreamer.

However, with that said, I ultimately like the message that this settles on, as well as the shared moment of Nightmare Moon questioning whether she could change. Maybe I’m a sucker for the message itself, but I do feel like it manages to tie together the disparate elements on offer here (such as the phantasmagoric imagery) in a surprisingly neat bow. I think the delivery of Nightmare Moon’s self-doubt could be punched-up a bit more, perhaps by giving her a longer moment to contemplate Luna’s words. I also think the story runs a bit long in general for what ultimately boils down to a pretty simple message-fic. But again: this sticks its landing. I’ve been playing the Writeoff game long enough to know that’s not always an easy thing to do.

So kudos for that, author! I’d definitely give this another pass or two, and consider some of the other thoughts on hand from others—but this is a solid foundation. I think it’s got enough legs to clean up nicely.

Tier: Almost There
#4 · 1
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Okay, so first off I really like the concept here. I'm a sucker for anything to do with Luna and NMM, and the idea that the Nightmare is some weird pseudo-Freudian part of her psyche is conveyed pretty well.

I have mixed feelings about the story as a whole. On the one hand, the general surrealism of dreams was conveyed well--strange imagery, odd jumps between places and topic. However, I found NMM's attempts to sway Luna a little... simplistic. Maybe I just read too many of this kind of fic, but her arguments felt like the most basic ones she could make. I dunno. I liked this, but I really think you could do more with it.

I do have to also note that there were some noticeable typos and general mistakes here and there; missing words, grammar issues, etc. Not the most important thing ultimately, always something you can fix later, but still.

Finally: if the title is a reference to the MGMT song, n i c e.
#5 ·
· · >>Miller Minus
The tone and voicing of this story kind of threw me on this one. It's one of those fanfics that doesn't seem anything like the show, and I can get behind that, but I like it more when there's a clear reason behind things like intense gore and swearing from canon characters. The story itself, and Luna's growth, fit the show just fine, so why have we dialed up to the M-rating? It's not like Luna confronting the nightmare is inherently a gory process. I hope that makes sense.

Speaking of voice, Luna sounds a lot like NMM here. She seems to counter NMM's petulance with her own petulance at every turn, and not only did that make it hard to tell who was talking at any given time, it also kind of hurts the message of your story? The concept here seems to be that Luna is finally ready to leave NMM behind, but doing that by shouting in her face and, well, acting exactly like her, makes me think she isn't really at all.

That's all I really have to say. Allow me to quote Meri's comment because I agree with it super hard and am not above plagiarizing my friends.

Okay, so first off I really like the concept here. I'm a sucker for anything to do with Luna and NMM, and the idea that the Nightmare is some weird pseudo-Freudian part of her psyche is conveyed pretty well.

I have mixed feelings about the story as a whole. On the one hand, the general surrealism of dreams was conveyed well--strange imagery, odd jumps between places and topic. However, I found NMM's attempts to sway Luna a little... simplistic. Maybe I just read too many of this kind of fic, but her arguments felt like the most basic ones she could make. I dunno. I liked this, but I really think you could do more with it.

I do have to also note that there were some noticeable typos and general mistakes here and there; missing words, grammar issues, etc. Not the most important thing ultimately, always something you can fix later, but still.

Finally: if the title is a reference to the MGMT song, n i c e.


Thanks for writing!!!!
#6 · 1
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>>Miller Minus
Just randomly scanning my old reviews, don't mind me.

so why have we dialed up to the M-rating?


I didn't mean M-rating. It's not Mature. I just meant it's a lot more explicit than the show.

Bad Miller.
#7 ·
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I'm a bit fan of surreal writing, and dreams are a great medium to tap into surrealist imagery. That said, the story felt trapped in a mold of "2 characters stand behind a set piece and talk." Not a bad thing necessarily. But with the grand settings you're using, it would be cool to get some more interaction/action going to ramp up the drama and to show the internal struggle Luna faces.
#8 ·
·
I liked this one. A number of issues other people had with it didn't particularly stand out to me (for example, Nightmare employing gore enough for it to be something Luna's used to vs Nightmare's entrances not always being that dramatic didn't strike me as a contradiction because both are a "sometimes" concept rather than a "constantly" concept). It does seem a little odd that Luna is just letting Nightmare do whatever she wants -- it's not clear whether Luna has no control over this dream or just chooses not to exert any, since her end goal seems to be to wear Nightmare down. The line at the end "Do you think I could get better?" "I think we already have" was very strong.

Oddly enough the thing I found most jarring was the shipping; Twilight being Luna's SO has no relevance to anything else in the story and seems to be just thrown in there for the sake of making shippers happy, or something. If Twilight is Luna's SO and this is important enough to the story to include it, maybe incorporate it more into the meat of the tale? Make some element of Luna talking about her recovery refer to Twilight specifically, not just generic "loved ones".

Overall I thought this was a strong entry.
#9 · 1
·
This is another example of an old premise being retold, but I wanna praise it for bringing something a little different to the equation: the manner of personification, the way that Nightmare Moon is personified. I found the imagery of her as a carcass, the recurring motif of characters bursting from each other's viscera, genuinely disturbing (although the Twilight example laid it on a little thick).

In short, though a tried-and-true premise, the author managed to do something inventive with it, and I'm gratified.

That said, I found this a little too telly in execution. It's driven by expository dumps force-feeding the reader information, rather than that same information being doled out through character, action, and dialogue. I can see, for example, Nightmare Moon taunting Luna by discussing her wedding to Twilight, being a natural way of establishing what happened, and a more effective way than just having Luna reflect on it mid-scene.

...I actually found that element to be rather confusing in the story. As I understand it, Luna's shifting between possible realities. Is her marriage with Twilight just one possibility, out of many, or is that literally what happened in-universe? If it's the latter, then you need to make it matter a lot more than it currently does. If you draw attention to Twilight marrying Luna, then Twilight's marriage to Luna needs to matter a lot more than just being a background detail about the protagonist.

8/10.