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The Morning After · FiM Minific ·
Organised by RogerDodger
Word limit 400–750
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The Princess Sleeps
The princess sleeps and dreams that she is sleeping.

Unobserved, dispersed within her mind, I'm one with her at last, her peace alluring. Gentle breaths, all jasmine soaked and swirling, rise like cedar smoke or frankincense to soothe the air, aglow with love's forgiveness.

"Undeserved." The thought is dark and scurries, bristling, shadowy, a fleeting rat.

I cast a tendril, snatch the thought before the princess wakes. I draw it close and whisper, "Love's a gift, bestowed instead of earned."

It laughs like beetles scuttling through the leaves. "A sophist's ploy," it rustles more than says. "Reality asserts itself, you know as well as I. Her fuse is ever lit, her ticking never ending, only muffled."

"Baseless, creature base!" I keep contained, will not allow my former nature space to kick the princess sideways in her dreams the way I did at her command in nightly cavalcade for days and weeks and months. "She finally understands the trust they have in her, the faith, and yes, in fact, the love."

It squirms against my grip. "You can't believe you serve the truth by holding me at bay! I'm vital, bringing balanced common sense to all internal plans, deliberations, thoughts, and schemes! Without the touch of Doubt—"

"You plague her." Still, I'm somehow murmuring instead of shouting, pulling back so nothing sharp can crack the sky, disturb her slumber, make the flower petals, delicate and limpid, cringe and wither, droop and fade. "You have a place, I won't deny, but now that place is changing, Doubt, has broadened, widened, grown refined. You play along or die."

The snort it gives dispenses ripples, shivering the dreaming dream. "You little fool! You draw your strength from nowhere else but me!"

"I did!" To emphasize the word, I'm almost forced to raise my voice. But violent volume, that's the past: the present's softly tough. "That you begot me, seeded me inside her royal womb, I frowningly acknowledge."

"Ha!" Its cackle smacks me hard as any fist. "A father's claim I lay upon you, then, your duty plainly obvious!" Its claws unsheathing, Doubt begins to dig, to work its talons deep into my skin. "Your princess and your mother needs to know her subjects are eternally protected, safe from all the darkness squirming deep within her fetid, dank and cankered soul! And yes, our roles are changing, you and I, but still we have our obligations, must unite to check her power, not allow—!"

"Enough." With rapid teeth, I separate the bloated head of seething Doubt from what it calls its body, crunch its skull and bones, and dine upon its lies and partial truths. "I'm acting as a filter now, a screen of love and caring raised against you, Doubt. That you exist, she won't forget, but neither will I let you dowse the silver light of moon and stars that sweetly fills the night."

It wriggles, but I force it down, my senses stretched and all alert for any shuffle, squeak or crackle. Doubt will ever slither through but never rule while I'm around.

The princess sleeps, and I preserve her dreaming all the day so she can guard the night.
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#1 · 3
· · >>FanOfMostEverything
Author:

I hazard that you went to write a poem; then missed the mark yet scorned to set vers libre, and did deregiment the work to prose. Perhaps I but reveal my ignorance; still I commend your virtuosity. Command of meter sparkles in your lines, and charms the ear with its felicity, and bears a very vital moral lesson.

I cannot hang firm name on the narrator. Is it the Nightmare, tamed by Harmony? Perhaps her pet Tiberius, standing watch? The last I speak in jest, as you can tell.

At any rate, my pleasure is sincere. I gladly rank your work in the top tier.
#2 · 1
· · >>Posh
This walks the line between eloquent and grandiloquent. I can’t decide whether it goes too far. Still, given that the narrator is the spawn of Luna in a sense, it makes sense that its thoughts will be rather more flowery than the norm. Likewise her Doubt.

The story itself is a lovely postscript to its inspiring episode. Very fine craftsmanship.

>>GroaningGreyAgony
Have you seen "Do Princesses Dream of Magic Sheep?"
#3 · 1
·
>>FanOfMostEverything My first thought was that it was the Tantabus, yeah, but as the story kept going, I changed my interpretation to a Luna-centric, pony-themed version of Inside-Out. Luna's emotions manifest in her brain and argue while she sleeps and dreams of magic sheep.

I don't mean for that to sound disparaging; I liked this quite a lot. For all of the reasons stated above.
#4 · 1
·
"You have a place, I won't deny, but now that place is changing, Doubt, has broadened, widened, grown refined. You play along or die."


Several of the lines here are perfect poetry both in rhyme and meter (rime and metre?), and I can't imagine that was by chance. It adds something even if it isn't consistent—and I might like it better that way.

I have to suppose that the protagonist is another of Luna's emotions, like Love or Forgiveness or something like that. Nothing else makes sense with all the puzzle pieces. I think you've gone too subtle for your own good because that lack of reveal makes it feel incomplete to me... so why not use the title cleverly? I've no doubt you're capable of it.
#5 · 2
·
This was definitely quite poetic, but it encroaches too much on the flowery and the overwrought for me. It is stodgy, and I fought through it like you can fight your way into a mass of bubblegum. Besides, I can't tell I was pretty much interested by the “plot”.

At the end, that makes it a pretty great experiment into English prose/poetry, but little else. I was left with the impression to have beheld an Homeric fight as the 19th century may have romanticised it, with impersonations of “concepts”.

So while I can’t pan it because of the obvious mastery you displayed, I can’t raise it to the sky neither.
#6 · 1
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I don't really understand who's the narrator here. Was it hinted at somehow?

Some of the writing is very nice. However, the language of both participants of the dialogue occasionally veers into the gratingly stilted and artificial. "A father's claim I lay upon you, then, your duty plainly obvious!" Nobody talks like that, even philosophers in debate.

Also, this sentence is rather incomprehensible:

I keep contained, will not allow my former nature space to kick the princess sideways in her dreams the way I did at her command in nightly cavalcade for days and weeks and months.


"Keep contained" what? What's "nature space?" Why would the princess be "kicked sideways" (as opposed to being kicked in any other direction)? Why'd she once commanded the mysterious narrator to repeatedly kick her this way?
#7 · 2
·
There are some wonderful phrases and eloquent poetry on display here, however... it goes too far. All the fancy words turn the plot to mush in my head. I get nothing more than a vague sense of "hope vs. doubt" with no solid themes or take-away messages. The story is, in a way, like an overwrought dessert. Fancy and delicious, but too rich to enjoy for more than a single bite. The density becomes cloying, the prose, overly rich, with nothing to balance it out.
#8 · 3
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This is definitely the Tantabus, re-made, or purified, or whatever. Doubt talks about them working together in the past, the whole 'parent of' when the Tantabus is born of doubt and regret, and so on.

That, I think, makes it more interesting than if it were some psychopomp.
#9 · 1
·
The Princess Sleeps — B+ — A nice little sub-story about what goes on in Luna’s mind, suitably dark where it needs to be. It’s kinda rough, though, and the length restrictions make it more difficult to pick out just what actions are taking place.
#10 · 1
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The Great

Solid effort. I haven't had to do poetry scans in a while, but this seems to flow fairly well?

The Rough

I really haven't worked with poetry in a while and, even when I did, I was not a huge fan. That's kind of where I come down here. There's clearly love put into it, but I'm not quite sure the payoff is strong enough to really break me of my general feelings regarding poetry.

Unfortunately, beyond that, I really don't feel fit to offer much commentary on this otherwise for the above reason. Poetry was just never my forte, and this touches far too close.
#11 ·
· · >>Baal Bunny
Genre: Hypnotoad!

Thoughts: I'll echo others who wished for greater clarity about who's speaking, or just a better anchor to reality for the struggle taking place here. The language is beautiful at points, but without knowing what's really going on, it's kind of sound and fury signifying... I don't know what.

But I don't want to be discouraging here. I see there's good stuff underneath the surface, and that sort of thing is never dead if it can eternal lie.

Tier: Almost There
#12 · 1
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As I've stated before, I rather hate poetry in general. So the fact that this story wasn't written as poetry, but is merely poetic, worked quite well for me.

I've never been quite sure where to draw the line between 'eloquent' and 'you dun used too many of them fancy words, son.' This fic definitely leans towards the latter, but doesn't quite seem to cross the line.

All in all, I found this to be quite and surprisingly enjoyable. Two thumbs up!

Also, I'm surprised so many people seem to have an issue as to who the narrator is. I figured it was the Tantabus pretty early on, and everything else only reinforced my assumption. And usually I'm the one scratching their head over the meaning of some of these fics. ;>
#13 · 5
·
Thanks, folks:

And congrats to our winners!

This is a piece I've been wanting to write since "Do Princesses Dream..." aired a year and a half ago--that final image of Luna asleep in that odd landscape made the story's first line pop into my head, and it's been floating around in there all this time waiting--so thank you, once again, Writeoff, for giving me the jab in the brain that I needed to get something done.

As for rewriting, I'll definitely make it clearer that this is indeed the Tantabus narrating. Luna absorbs it back into herself at the end of the big dream fight, and, well, it's gotta do something with itself now that its no longer charged with kicking Luna sideways every night, doesn't it?

As for the form, it's called blank verse when the lines have rhythm but no end rhymes. I did a lot of playing around with enjambment, running sentences from one pentameter into the next, and with polysyllabic line endings--not exactly feminine rhymes since, y'know, there's no end rhymes. I think reining that stuff in and breaking the piece up into its actual lines and stanzas should help with the hypnotoad effect that >>CoffeeMinion and others identified here--it's easy to get caught in the rhythm and come out the other end with no idea what the story was actually about...

So thanks, folks, for the comments. I'll give this a good vacuuming and polishing, then it'll go into my poetry collection over on my AugieDog page

Mike