Deliciously done; a prequel? I admire the well-chosen imagery and metrical precision.

I contemplated abstaining from this one on the grounds that I'm not the best judge of poetry, but I decided that that was the lazy way out, so I went back in and tried my best to understand it.

As far as I can tell, this is rather beautifully done. The meter seems nearly perfect, and I've never seen this specific rhyme scheme used before; it initially threw me off, but it was nice once I caught on. The story told seems to have been given an equal measure of care, and it ties into the prompt quite neatly too. I'm not sure whether the fact that it's tied to that other story in the author's note is a good or a bad thing, though, since I like that you wanted to expand upon that story, but I wish that this had been a wholly original concept.

Regardless, it was executed well and certainly stuck in my mind. Well done!

Good poetry is so hard to come by in this fandom. I treasure every instance of it I find. All the more so when it’s a novel rhyme scheme that uses its own form to better emphasize the alternating seductive and sinister aspects of the Nightmare. I stumbled over only a single line (“So frail, pale, wan and fey,” which feels like it lost some syllables.) Exquisite work all around.

I'll keep this short and sweet. It was beautifully done. I think FanofMostEverything said good poetry is hard to come by, and it really is. Wanna know what's harder? Great poetry. And I think this is some great poetry, so props to the author... errr, I mean poet.

The meter was unique too, and probably my favorite part of this piece of art. I can't wait for the results to come out just so I can rave to the writer how envious I am of this. Amazing work! I expect to see this in the top ten.

This story wasn't on my slate,
But let me join in the debate.
It's surely lovely, dark and deep;
And still, I feel, with little weight.

Your rhymes are mostly crisp and fine.
Yet what's with these italic lines?
They break the mold and catch the eye.
Are they a hint, a clue, a sign?

Perhaps I miss what you imply,
Outside of rhyme and kiss and sigh,
This must be Luna and her shade...
They're doing something by-and-by.

But I'm not seeing arc or plot;
It's pretty, but it is not fraught
With tension, anger, or device,
To draw me in. My heart's uncaught.

'More words might help', I'd like to say,
It seems, though, you have answered nay.
This barely bobs above the count,
That it must meet to join the fray.

Unless it's time that left you short?
If you say that, I can't retort.
Our margins here are truly thin;
Perhaps you had to call 'abort!'

The fault will likely stand with me;
I've claimed before I shouldn't be
the one to comment on a verse.
I guess today I'm fancy-free.

I wrote in rhyme here as a joke.
I hope you don't think there is cloak-
-ed malice in these words of mine.
I swear, I'm quite the friendly bloke!

Prose version: I read this because of the discussion, and I think giving poetry more attention is worth doing. This is pretty, but it doesn't seem to go deeper than a touch of shipping. There's a wonderful hint of lunacy at the end, and the poetry evokes that nicely. However, much of this left me cold or mildly confused, such as the seemingly significant italicized bits. However, I cling staunchly to my claims of knowing nothing about poetry despite spending however long it took to hack this rhyme together, so there's a good chance I'm simply missing something or not in your audience. I wrote a 'poetic' review because it seemed fun at the time, and am not intending to mock you or anything like that.

>>ChappedPenguinLips I also wanted to reply to this comment, because (as far as I can tell) this poem is similar to Robert Frost's "Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening." So I don't think I'd call it's meter or rhyme 'unique', per se. It's still a beautiful style, however.

>>Not_A_Hat

Aha! I see that now. But to me it was unique since I personally had never seen it.

Also. Hat, your poem was beautiful, and you're a beautiful, beautiful bastard. Be proud.

>>ChappedPenguinLips Well, now I feel warm and fuzzy inside. I guess it was worth writing. :)

Given I loved Only, Only, Only You, this one rates very highly for me as well. Then again I am a sucker for Frost-style works.

>>Not_A_Hat

The italics appear to be when the Nightmare is whispering her more sinister temptations - the non-italicized words are the words of her love, the italicized is where she is trying to sway Luna into acting.

Anyhow, yea, top contender from me!

>>Not_A_Hat
Here's the thing: "Snowy Evening" goes AABA BBCB, and so forth, adding to the sense of steady progress, allowing us to see the next stage of the journey on the horizon. "Only, Only, Only Me" Goes AABA BB CCDC DD and so forth. For me, that structure lent itself into the theme of something alien and external insinuating itself where it should not be, its nature only becoming clear when it's already too late to stop it.

Granted, I may be overthinking this. :P

I wouldn't call this Frost-style, but a much older style. The liberties with grammar and elevated style are 19th-century, and if you want to match the rhyme scheme, Coleridge's "Kubla Khan" is more similar in voice than Frost, despite that one line.

It's excellent poetry, in sound, choice of words, clever word play, and the cleverness with which the Nightmare seduces Luna. The dramatic storyline makes it more interesting than the old love poetry it's imitating, and also gives it more material to work with, and so it is better poetry.

Two lines struck me as generic and boring:

All those who care will understand—
Your foes will end up terrified.

The rest of it is great.

Judging poetry compared to stories is very difficult, apples and oranges. I don't have to, since I can't vote on this now.

>>Not_A_Hat

But I'm not seeing arc or plot;
It's pretty, but it is not fraught
With tension, anger, or device,
To draw me in. My heart's uncaught.

I think it's unfair to compare a poem to a story in this way.
If you compare this to the older love poetry it's mostly modeled on, I think you'll find the old stuff is even less dramatic. Poetry is rooted in an older tradition than prose, a classical/medieval tradition in which there is no tension because every poem or story is just a re-working of tropes in a predictable fashion. This was broken by the metaphysical poets just after Shakespeare, for a few years--about 1600-1620--and then we had another 300 years of boring love poetry until things started changing around 1920. I think it's unfair to accuse "Only, only, only me" of being less than gripping in a world in which John Keats is still considered a great poet.

William Browne, early 17th century:
Underneath this sable hearse
Lies the subject of all verse:
Sidney's sister, Pembroke's mother,
Death, ere though has slain another
Fair and learn'd and good as she,
Time shall throw a dart at thee.

Robert Herrick (1591-1675):
When as in silks my Julia goes,
Then, then (methinks) how sweetly flows
That liquefaction of her clothes.
Next, when I cast mine eyes and see
That brave vibration each way free
O how that glittering taketh me!

John Keats
The day is gone, and all its sweets are gone!
Sweet voice, sweet lips, soft hand, and softer breast,
Warm breath, light whisper, tender semi-tone,
Bright eyes, accomplish’d shape, and lang’rous waist!
Faded the flower and all its budded charms,
Faded the sight of beauty from my eyes,
Faded the shape of beauty from my arms,
Faded the voice, warmth, whiteness, paradise –
Vanish’d unseasonably at shut of eve,
When the dusk holiday – or holinight
Of fragrant-curtain’d love begins to weave
The woof of darkness thick, for hid delight,
But, as I’ve read love’s missal through to-day,
He’ll let me sleep, seeing I fast and pray.

Walter Savage Landor (1775-1864):
Ah, what avails the sceptred race!
Ah, what the form divine!
What every virtue, every grace!
Rose Aylmer, all were thine.
Rose Aylmer, whom these wakeful eyes
May weep, but never see,
A night of memories and of sighs
I consecrate to thee.

See also Annabel Lee by Edgar Allen Poe:

It was many and many a year ago,
In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
By the name of Annabel Lee;
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
Than to love and be loved by me.
...

... or don't. These are all famous poems, and all less dramatic than "Only, Only, Only Me" above.

>>Bad Horse

... or don't. These are all hugely famous poems, and all boring compared to "Only, Only, Only Me" above.

Well, I won't argue that. It's a very pretty poem, don't get me wrong.

One reason I tell people I don't know anything about poetry is precisely because of stuff like this. If you say:

I think it's unfair to compare a poem to a story in this way.

I have trouble putting together a solid argument. I mean, on the one hand, you're plainly correct. I can't say 'a poem should have everything a story does, plus rhyme and meter.' That's more than a little ridiculous; it's obvious rhyme and meter are - or, I guess, should be - chosen to suit a specific purpose, and bring strengths and restrictions along with. Claiming it can simply be added on top of a story dismisses both those strengths and the limitations inherent.

On the other hand, however, I don't know if I'm comfortable saying that 'a poem doesn't need to have anything a story needs', because when I get right down to it, I think the basics of what a story and a poem require to be 'good entertainment' are pretty similar. Depth of emotion and intricacy of meaning, characterization, economy of style and elegance of presentation; they may take different forms, but the aim really isn't too far off, is it?

Or maybe it is?

As I said in my hackish review, there's a good chance I'm simply not in the audience here. Perhaps I haven't read enough poetry to 'get' this. However... if 'getting' this requires reading a significant amount of poetry, then perhaps that's worth knowing in its own right? Or perhaps that's simply the state of poetry these days, and expected of a lay-person such as I.

So, I won't defend my review. If you claim that poetry doesn't require plot or emotional devices such as arc, I'll accept that I am, perhaps, wrong. However, I'm curious. What is it, in your opinion, that poetry should have in order to qualify as 'good'? Is evoking a single emotion enough? Is evoking a single emotion superior to the contrasting emotions an arc of some sort can evoke? I tend to dismiss stories without arc as 'one-note' and 'flat'. But is this the superior choice for a poem, or simply not a consideration?

I do agree that the limitations inherent in a poem should be balanced by the inherent strengths. There are some things that are just not possible inside of metered rhyme - and some things you simply can't do without it. But are they entirely different beasts? Or are the aims of each convergent, even if the routes used to reach there are tilted one way or the other? Perhaps they shouldn't be compared that way. Should I not be trying to compare them at all?

Very nice:

I'll give the same suggestion that I gave to the original version of Corejo's poem, though, and it's doubly important here since this is a poem of seduction. Give us some concrete, sensual details: the gentle rasp of feather against feather as the Nightmare caresses Luna's wings; the tickle from the nebulous hairs of Luna's mane as the Nightmare leans forward to whisper in her ear; stuff like that.

I'll also say how much I love the specific way the meter falls apart at the poem's climax, losing the unaccented syllables and going all trochaic in the lines that begin with "Clench" and "Arch." I'd even suggest doing that in the italicized lines that follow just to emphasize the Nightmare's victory. But I'm a little less enamored of the similar metrical jiggery-pokery in the second stanza where the one syllable words "frail" and "pale" are stretched to fill a couple two syllable parts of the line. A few stanzas later as the seduction grows, I wouldn't mind it at all, but right at the beginning when things should be smooth as silk, it's too jarring.

Still, good stuff.

Mike

>>Not_A_Hat First, horizon and Baal Bunny know more about poetry than I do.

Second,

What is it, in your opinion, that poetry should have in order to qualify as 'good'? Is evoking a single emotion enough? Is evoking a single emotion superior to the contrasting emotions an arc of some sort can evoke? I tend to dismiss stories without arc as 'one-note' and 'flat'. But is this the superior choice for a poem, or simply not a consideration?

I wrote about the different standards for stories & poetry in "Completeness in stories, poems, & songs".

Is evoking a single emotion enough for a poem? Yes, if it really evokes it, rather than just invoking it. I don't base this on argument, but on noting what people like and what I like in poems and songs.

Is evoking a single emotion superior to the contrasting emotions an arc of some sort can evoke? I don't think that has an answer. I can compare 2 instances, e.g., one story to one poem. I can't compare stories to poems in general because I can't (ever) sample the space of possible poems or possible stories in a sufficiently unbiased manner to do a statistical comparison. The terms "poem" and "story" aren't defined solidly enough to do so.

Another part of the issue is that I don't want to answer the question "What is it, in your opinion, that poetry should have in order to qualify as 'good'?" I would rather compare the consensuses of societies. My previous comment noted that, in the opinions of people of the 18th & 19th centuries, love poetry doesn't need to have an interesting story to be good. I think they preferred it to be completely conventional and predictable. I, personally, don't like that poetry, but I can't point to any extensive love poetry tradition that I think did it better.

The New Critics, circa 1930-1950, and particularly Cleanth Brooks, built a system for evaluating poetry. Use the term "New Critics" with a mental asterisk, because they weren't as unified as people say they were, and they didn't say most of the things people now say they did. But I can at least say that Cleanth Brooks thought the essential ingredient of poetry was tension between two contradictory beliefs or conclusions, and that poetry was the appropriate form for such subjects because it can conclude without resolving the tension, instead leaving the reader feeling convinced of both points of view simultaneously. Given this theory, the metaphysical poets and Robert Frost should perhaps be called the greatest poets.

The weakness of the New Critics was that they looked for tension in logical terms, and ignored whether the poem could move someone emotionally or not. So, for instance, Brooks loved Milton's L'Allegro and Il Penseroso because they have a dual logical structure, and overlooked how dreadfully stale, pretentious, and boring they are.

I can't give any specific answer other than that if you mark poetry down for not having things you're used to having in stories, also mark it up for having things you don't usually get in stories.

The "tongue" line was a little too sudden for me, but then I do like to get to know fics a bit better before going that far. :derpytongue2:

I dunno, this rocked.

Tier: Top Contender

It thoroughly amuses me how this story is one of the few stories to have multiple guesses, and basically everyone pinpointed exactly who wrote it.

I medalled! I medalled in a minific round! I medalled in a minific round with poetry! My high-scoring track record comes overwhelmingly from short stories, and it's always a pleasant surprise to see a minific come together like this. Thank you to everyone for reading and enjoying it — especially all the commenters unused to poetry who forced themselves to evaluate it for their slate.

I've been having a good run lately, and I broke some new ground last month: I'm now the first author with a gold in all four of the Writeoffs' categories! (Cold in Gardez beat me to "score a medal in all four", and so far we're the only two.) You might think that "medalling with poetry" is another Writeoff first, but it's not — Chris' "An Equestrian Gaur" accomplished that years back — and bronze arguably isn't even poetry's high-water mark (4th District Court, which was mostly in the form of song lyrics, won gold). Nevertheless, this joins a very elite club.

Only, Only, Only Me even did better than Corejo's original, for which I feel a little guilty — though it was acknowledged that "Only, Only, Only You" suffered from being severely padded out to meet the short-story round's 2000-word minimum, and was a vastly stronger story in its final published form at ~1200 words. (If poetry in a minific round is Writeoff hard mode, poetry in a short-story round is Writeoff "I Wanna Be The Guy".) This was absolutely meant as a love letter to OOOY, and I do hope that OOOM got people to read OOOY who otherwise wouldn't have.



I designed OOOM — which focused on the Nightmare's initial seduction of Princess Luna after she started getting upset with Celestia's popularity and her own exclusion 1000 years ago; hence a "princess not included" — as a prequel to OOOY, which focused on the Nightmare returning in the modern era to discover that Luna no longer wants her. While OOOY was about the Nightmare wrestling with her feelings upon discovering Luna's change of heart, the core of my piece is about showing the way the Nightmare originally preyed upon Luna, taking advantage of her vulnerability with a bait-and-switch. OOOM is wonderfully coy about the Nightmare's motives — ostensibly focusing on the relationship, but breaking both the narrative and the meter in a few places to hint at an uglier side — and I ran hard with my intepretation of that, building up a portrait of kindness masking manipulation and abuse.

As such, the arc of the story here is the way the Nightmare gets what she wants despite Luna's unwavering love for Celestia — first feeling out the direct approach and being rebuffed, then retreating to kindness while maneuvering to exploit Luna's isolation, and then using intimacy to get her hooks in. By the "flawless nightmare face" line her victory is inevitable, but as she starts revealing her true goals, she initially cloaks them in platitudes like "justice" to see if she can get full buy-in. When that doesn't happen, like any abuser, she simply starts overriding Luna and taking control.

The next-to-last stanza is where you can see Luna start to realize the mistake she's made; the reassurance she gets in return is perfunctory and ominous. By the last stanza the Nightmare's not even bothering to pretend to care. I definitely intended that to line up with the context of OOOY, with the Nightmare returning like the old abusive ex who doesn't realize her old tricks don't work any more, desperately falling back on the platitudes that worked the first time.

Corejo willing, I'm going to publish this (more or less as-is) to FIMFic in my Never The Final Word story continuation collection.

A few responses to comments:

>>Morning Sun

It thoroughly amuses me how this story is one of the few stories to have multiple guesses, and basically everyone pinpointed exactly who wrote it.

Well, now my silence on this story makes sense, if it didn't before. ;-p I wish someone else had written it so that I could have jumped in on the poetry discussion.

Seriously though, I'm amazingly flattered by the number of correct guesses. That suggests that when people think of medal-worthy poetry they think of me — despite OOOM actually being my first Writeoff submission in the form of metered verse. AugieDog/Baal Bunny is much more prolific in that area, along with Georg; and Chris and Corejo (among others) have also previously turned in strong entries in the genre. I hardly feel like the go-to author for top-tier poetry.

[multiple people]

“So frail, pale, wan and fey,” … feels like it lost some syllables

Am I really the only one who felt that "FRAY-uhl, PAY-uhl" was an acceptable reading of the line? :-p (*googles syllable rules*) Ugh. I guess I'll scrap those two words and try to find something with similar meaning, cadence, and internal rhyme.

About the structure and italics:

>>FanOfMostEverything

"Snowy Evening" goes AABA BBCB, and so forth, adding to the sense of steady progress, allowing us to see the next stage of the journey on the horizon. "Only, Only, Only Me" Goes AABA BB CCDC DD and so forth. For me, that structure lent itself into the theme of something alien and external insinuating itself where it should not be, its nature only becoming clear when it's already too late to stop it.

This analysis is a much clearer statement of my intentions than what was rolling around in my head when I was constructing it, but yes, this was very much the intended effect.

When writing, I initially started with paired couplets like OOOY did (AA BB CC etc.), but the poem already felt thematically and conceptually derivative, and I felt like I had to extend the structure to bring OOOM more fully into its own. Couplets also lent OOOY a strong sense of flow, matching the rhyme and then moving on, and worked well with its stream-of-consciousness monologue narration. OOOM was a single side of an implied dialogue (albeit a lopsided one), and needed more give-and-take. As I was writing the first stanza, trying to efficiently identify the characters and setting through textual hints, I settled on hinting the Nightmare by using "flow" for her movement, and looking at the first three lines and the rhyme of "flow", my brain stuck on Stopping By the Woods on a Snowy Evening (nice eye, >>Not_A_Hat), and then I absolutely had to include the third A-rhyme and include "Whose tears these are I think I know" as a tip o' the hat (I see what you also did there, >>Not_A_Hat). From there it was natural to settle on the regimented form of AABABB to reflect the give-and-take of the dialogue.

>>Morning Sun

The italics appear to be when the Nightmare is whispering her more sinister temptations - the non-italicized words are the words of her love, the italicized is where she is trying to sway Luna into acting.

The technical reason for the italics is that AABABB felt way too symmetrical for the relationship portrayed in the piece. I wanted to forcibly break the symmetry, and spacing tricks didn't feel sufficient. When I played around with it and settled upon italics, I realized that reinforced the intrusiveness FOME commented on, and to a lesser extent the tonal shift of the Nightmare's observations vs. her direct actions. I wasn't able to bring that last part out quite so successfully (there are a few stanzas which blur the lines between the oblique and italic parts, and e.g. "If only she displayed such care" shows the Nightmare being far more devious in oblique than she is in italics), but I'm glad it still came across that way.

One thing nobody commented on, by the way, is that every set of rhymes in the piece is unique — except for the set containing "Sun" in both the first and last stanzas. That was very intentional, bookending the piece with the Luna/Celestia//NMM/Celestia dynamic and otherwise following a strict progression. (The duplicated "honeysuckle darkened lips", the only other reused rhyme, was an homage to OOOY's similar repetition.)

>>Not_A_Hat

'More words might help', I'd like to say,
It seems, though, you have answered nay.
This barely bobs above the count,
That it must meet to join the fray.

First of all: you magnificent bastard, this is quite possibly the best review I've ever read on writeoff.me. Don't you ever say you know nothing about poetry, if you can put this together for a mere comment. (Having no training in poetry, or no historical grounding in it, I'll accept, but merely in the construction here you've displayed more insight about rhyme and meter than 90% of people who attempt the form.)

[img]http://www.reactiongifs.us/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/slow_clap_citizen_kane.gif[/img]

As to the wordcount issue: the original version of OOOM clocked in at 307 words. That was as long as I dared to go for a poem exploring the themes I covered (the progression of manipulation in the Nightmare's approach), and I started to panic at the thought that, just like Corejo, I'd have to start adding filler just to reach the minimum.

I lucked out. After an abortive attempt to add filler stanzas at the beginning providing more prologue (which wrecked my solar symmetry, and I'm glad I scrapped it), I decided to work blue and add in the sex scene — which provided the literal and figurative climax of the piece, and the transition that turned the lip-suckling into a meaningful part of the poem instead of an oddly-wedged-in wordplay homage. The need to expand also forced me to add the justice paragraph, which improved the flow of the ending. Given the point of the piece, I would despair at expanding it any further.

But I'm not seeing arc or plot;
It's pretty, but it is not fraught
With tension, anger, or device,
To draw me in. My heart's uncaught.

I can't explain much better than I have above. This is an emotional and psychological exploration (told through one side of a dialogue); if that doesn't grab you then I'm not sure I can edit this into something which will. The tension here is all implied — Luna's reaction to the Nightmare's early suggestion, and her reaction to the late revelation of the Nightmare's true goals, and the fact Luna gets manipulated into something horrible she never intended to do.

I don't think your failure to be drawn in here was an issue with this being poetry. There are plenty of things which can make readers bounce off a text that have nothing to do with its form, and I honestly don't think more knowledge of poetry or poetic forms would help (or have helped) your engagement. My guess would be that there's subtext here (because this leans pretty heavily on subtext) that you missed or disagreed on; for example, simply reading Luna as a totally willing participant in the process flattens this story out tremendously, and the cues that I provide to contradict that are not beyond alternate interpretation.

Thank you for engaging with it as heavily as you did anyway!

>>Bad Horse

I wouldn't call this Frost-style, but a much older style. The liberties with grammar and elevated style are 19th-century, and if you want to match the rhyme scheme, Coleridge's "Kubla Khan" is more similar in voice than Frost, despite that one line.

You are, I'm afraid, far beyond me in terms of historical textual analysis (I have written more poetry, but I categorically reject that I know more about it as a genre than you do, because I would simply be incapable of putting together the posts you wrote here). OOOM wasn't an attempt to follow any particular tradition, and by writing in ignorance of the historical styles I probably stole some of the good (and bad) parts of each. So your posts about which tradition this is trying to follow are somewhat chasing after shadows. Still, they were fascinating.

You appear to disagree with the New Critics, and based on what you say I would be with you. My best answer to "what should poetry have to be considered good?" is a sort of Stewartian shrug, which isn't philosophically satisfying but it gets me by. The question of how to evaluate poetry relative to prose is a mighty huge can of worms, probably worth a blog post I doubt I'll have time to write, and a vigorous comment discussion thereon.

At a first pass I'd say that I evaluate poetry vs. prose in a vaguely similar way to how I evaluate dance vs. theater. I treat poetry as a dance with language — (mock interpretive dance all you want, but) not only is it trying to be beautiful but also to contain meaning. The "body language" of the piece, if you will.

And like body language vs. spoken language, you have to read meaning in different ways than you do in prose. A good poem will reinforce its theme with meter, for example, as I tried to do here — though a far clearer example would be An Impromptu Private Composition, etc. and the claustrophobic awkwardness of its iambic monometer — but (just like body language is also important in theater) because prose and poetry use the same fundamental vocabulary, there is overlap. And just like body language is powerful for communicating emotions and less so for communicating precise meaning, poetry is primarily an evocational experience.

>>Baal Bunny

Give us some concrete, sensual details: the gentle rasp of feather against feather as the Nightmare caresses Luna's wings; the tickle from the nebulous hairs of Luna's mane as the Nightmare leans forward to whisper in her ear; stuff like that.

That's a great idea, but the seduction here is a symptom, not a purpose.

The metrical point is a great one, though, and I'll prod at the sections in question.

This is already a half-day response, so I'll cut it short there. Thank you all once again; congratulations to Chris and GaPJaxie and to every one of our participants; and see you in the short-story round(s)!

>>horizon

First of all: you magnificent bastard, this is quite possibly the best review I've ever read on writeoff.me. Don't you ever say you know nothing about poetry, if you can put this together for a mere comment. (Having no training in poetry, or no historical grounding in it, I'll accept, but merely in the construction here you've displayed more insight about rhyme and meter than 90% of people who attempt the form.)

Aww, you're making me blush! But I would argue that doing something by instinct and guess-and-check doesn't really count as 'knowing', even if I somehow manage to do it fairly well? Still, I really didn't expect syllable counting and a rhyming dictionary to get me that far. Maybe I'll have to start believing Dubs when he tells me I'm a poet. ^_~

As for bouncing off the subtext, you're likely right. Part of it may have been that I never really could decide what you were doing with the italics; the separation was so obvious I assumed it was changing something very big in the narrative, like Luna speaking, (I think the line with 'nightmare face' screwed me up a bit on who was who...) but I could never really satisfy myself on what was going on. Your explanation here clears that up, but... I dunno. I obviously I missed some cues.

Even as an amateur, though, I'll hazard a suggestion. You could try:
"So frail and pale and wan and fey",
if you aren't interested in re-working that one line too heavily?

>>horizon

Huh. So you took her intentions in a different direction than I did. Original intent in OOOY wasn't that NMM wanted destruction for destruction's sake. She was the salve that Luna went to in her initial struggle against being overshadowed by Celestia's radiant reign. Taking from the write-off version (who's scene referenced here was cut from the final published version), NMM stumbled upon Luna in a dream while praying upon some other pony. She, a parasite subsisting on the night terrors of others, was taken in by Luna—kindred souls cast to the fringes of society. From that shared bond, they found comfort, and, eventually, love. True love, not hollow platitudes and poisonous words meant only to feed an empty stomach. It's not just a need for sustenance; NMM needs Luna emotionally, intimately. The entirety of the first scene—whether you reference the original or published version—ring true with this. Anything gleaned as duplicitous, while not necessarily incorrect, strays from my intention in the piece.

Nightmare Moon is not inherently evil. She only seeks what is, by her definition, correct, deserved, and necessary for self-preservation (and by extent, preservation of those she loves). It just so happens that what she defines as such falls within the category of evil from our perspective. Rather than being evil by nature, she is actually just a monstrously aggressive creature, and with such predatory aggressive instincts bent toward the defensive, it magnifies her inherent violence. If someone were mentally/physically abusing the one you loved right in front of you, would you not go fisticuffs to make them stop? If people failed to appreciate the hard work your loved one does for them, would you not do all that you can so that they do appreciate it? (Looking back, I can see where this might have fallen apart some with NMM's mentions of "We" being interpreted as she's doing this for herself. Those weren't meant as a Royal We's, but rather as 'us together''s—as the First Lady with her hand on her husband's shoulder as he poses for pictures behind his desk in the Oval Office.)

The only difference here is that NMM doesn't understand moderation (nor good/evil, only what is 'fair.' Eye for an eye and all that), and will stop at nothing to achieve what it is that she desires: Luna held to the esteem that she deserves, which is only achievable by removing the one that holds her back from that esteem. She only employs her manipulative powers in order to do what she feels is in Luna's best interest. A "Mother knows best" sort of thing.

In contrast to your interpretation, it's through her undying love for Luna that she's more than willing to commit the atrocities she mentions, which, I think, makes the piece all the more stronger than if she were just some insidious parasite who took pleasure in destroying the lives of others and taking the throne for herself by puppeteering another's body; she's doing what she thinks is right and is being punished by the world at large—and the one she loves—for it. By her aggressive dog-eat-dog nature, she cannot even fathom why she is being punished for doing the 'right' thing. It's such a sick and twisted sort of tragedy that I can't help but love, namely for the original theme this story was grounded in:

Sometimes, the harder we fight for the ones that we love, our actions are often what ultimately push them away.

Still, derivative works have their own life to live, and by virtue of that breathe life into the original. No matter the differences in our pieces, I love what you've done here.

That about wraps up what I have to say in response to your retrospect. There's probably a few points here that I forgot to touch on, though, so feel free to poke me back.