Ah, Nightmare Night. A holiday where happy little foals get to dress up as pirates and witches and whatever else tickles their fancy while roaming around getting delectable candies. The kids have fun, the adults think it's cute.
Yet under the giggles and playful cries... there are screams. The stories told to amuse the kids aren't all made up, the monsters they pretend to be don't live only in the imagination, and not everyone is out for the same kind of 'fun.' Dark things creep in Equestria's unnoticed corners, and Nightmare Night is their time to play. Tonight we shall watch them at their games. These are the tales of Nightmare Night that parents don't share with their children.
A big thanks goes to Cerulean Voice for taking time out of his busy schedule to edit Wonderful, Aurora and Sweet to Eat, and to RainbowBob for pre-reading.
A huge and happy 'thank you' also to Kvernikovskiy, originator of Researcher Twilight, for the commissioned cover art.
The Fleur-Verse
Chronologically from Top to Bottom:
Shadow Pony
Reddux the Tyrant
No Heroes Part I - The Roster
No Heroes Part II - The Journey Home
Lightning's Bolt
The Weed
The Challenge of Fleur
Ordinary World
A Challenge for Fleur
Sweet to Eat: Tales of Nightmare Night
5152850 That was the best comment I have ever seen.
5152850
And Rarity cries because you didn't mention her.
And my RiL list continues to grow...
Wahts this? Posteed on a Friday? Is somebody getting a little impatient ...?
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Not at all. I love my schedules, and posting every Friday means the final – and primary – story can come out on Halloween.
Planning, my friend, planning.
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Derpy apologizes.
Well... thank you for the nightmares I'll be having.
Very well done, I kept feeling chills as I read this.
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We haven't even gotten to the best part yet.
with all the promises she made it's a shame she didn't make it.
well done
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Repentance is no guarantee of salvation... but yeah, it is a shame, isn't it? Glad you liked it.
...
Heck, glad you read it.
Heh, I loved these storys. The first has a very Necronomicon/Cthullu vibe going for it. Reads almost like the writings of the Mad Arab. Twists Hoitys mind until he murders and murders and murders. Essentially Created a serial killer I think, one that can infect others.
The second story I thought would be Friday the 13th and it wasn't and it was awesome. Out in the woods and being picked off one by one and forgetting your even being picked off except for a diary. Creepy and you never find out who is even doing it.
The last story well, nice to see Fleur having fun with Big Mac, Fine Crime having fun and still being on the job and apparently Diamond Tiara paying for her crime. Seems its a good thing Spoon found some new friends when she did...
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This series is based predominantly on the concept of 'Weird Fiction,' the basic idea being that strange events happen and the reader is left with more questions than answers. Not all Weird fiction is horror-related, but the opportunity for discomfort, confusion and uncertainty means that the story type lends itself well to the genre. If possible, I'd like to maintain that particular theme every time I update this series.
that story pic... I'd read this just for that alone.
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Yeah, Kvernikovsky did an awesome job, didn't he?
5371597
it is absolutely divine.
Ye Gods, it truly is Vunderbar!
Two words:
HOLY CRAP...
Story puts me in mind of an Amnesia: The Dark Descent fan mod. It's not a bad read though I was a bit disappointed with the ending. More on that later when I do a full review.
This has a very 'Creepypasta' vibe to it. I think I've bumped into this type of story quite a bit. (there's one where the monster is a Wendigo which is probably my favorite.) I'd say the only detracting factor in this story are all the OC's, but as the point of the story seems to be to whittle them down one by one, the story actually becomes stronger the longer it goes on as a result.
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I thought that cover art was familiar. It seems we have a shared cover artist in common!
This last story ended up being a bit of a let down, more so because it's the only one that actually has anything to do with Nightmare Night directly. In a way it reads a bit like a Halloween version of A Christmas Carol, but with only one spirit and no redemption.
The setting is at its best when Diamond Tiara sneaks into town and basically serves as the audiences eyes and ears on all the goings on at Nightmare Night. While I don't think there's anything in the show that supports the adults having a more fiendish Nightmare Night (given everypony that didn't have a child seemed to be at a town outdoor dance) there's nothing that specifically says this can't be the case. Thus the bit with Fleur and the scary goings on in the bad part of town are probably the most enjoyable part of the story.
The rest, I'm not going to lie, is probably less enjoyable for me because I dislike the fanon that Silverspoon is somehow more redeemable than Diamond Tiara. She always seemed more like Smithers to Diamond's Mr. Burns. Oh sure Smithers isn't as evil, but he'd never go against Burns on anything unless it was for Burns own good.
The monster, or spirit of Nightmare, too didn't really do much for me. Sinister as it was, it was hard to tell what threat it really posed until towards the end of the story. If there had been some emphasis on it's incorporeal (yet still able to interact with physical objects) nature earlier on I think it's presence would've been a bit more menacing. Or even if it had been shown 'consuming' somepony else related to Diamond. As it was I didn't understand why Diamond Tiara didn't just run out of the house as soon as she realized something terrible was going on, or why she didn't proceed to run out of town after that, and never come back. I get that she's a child and is likely to make mistakes, bu it felt like she made a lot of dumb decisions for the sake of keeping a tenuous sense of tension afloat.
On the other hand, I liked the Headless Horseman-esque ending where all that's left is her tiara. It almost screams for a shattered pumpkin shell and an afterward by a New Englander that says for his part he can't credit any of the story for having happened.
Overall it's a nice slow burn, but it drags a bit in places and the air of menace the cover art promises never really seems to manifest until right at the end where Diamond Tiara's final fate is a bit of a foregone conclusion.
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It's a shame that you consider any normal character irredeemable, but c'est la vie.
I knew the story had some flaws, particularly in terms of its length and how I drew out certain aspects of it. As far as Diamond's decisions, hindsight is always 20/20; I don't think she did anything particularly dumb, especially considering that she had no real idea of what she was dealing with. How was she – or even you – to know that this apparition hadn't trapped her there, or perhaps covered all of Equestria, or any of a thousand other things? She did what her fear-addled mind demanded as best she could. Just because your first instinct is to run away doesn't mean that's what everyone would do. If anything, DT should be commended for at least trying to fix her mistake, fruitless though the act was.
I do see what you mean by 'the threat the apparition posed,' though. Perhaps if I had shown it interacting with the world in ways other than making everything creepy, cutting off the lights, locking everypony into some kind of coma sleep and actually pushing fear into DT's mind then it would have been a lot scarier to you. Then again, some of us don't need to see how a thing can hurt us to know that it can.
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Redemption, or the lack there of, isn't really the question. It's just how easily the fandom seems to think Silverspoon could be rehabilitated if split away from the bad influence of Diamond Tiara. I think both characters would need to be 'redeemed' or neither, though I readily admit that's my opinion. As it stands, no, I don't want every main character to be redeemed. That cheapens the idea of redemption, and a world without any conflict is a boring one.
As to DT's decisions it's more that I find them confusing if she's supposed to be in a state of severe terror.
I think that if there had been more emphasis on the creatures powers it would've been creepier. The lights simply not working is easily explained away by the power being cut. Her father being unable to wake up could simply mean he's drugged. The apparition itself could be explained away with a little bit of magic, not even uncommon magic, as shown by Fleur earlier in the story. So mundane were the 'frights' I was half expecting the entire thing to be a prank by Luna right up to the end, everything being well within her power set as displayed in Luna Eclipsed. I just think it fell short of the kind of mind numbing dread it felt like you were aiming for.
5988579
I didn't say 'every' main character, I said 'normal characters,' as in a generalization. By the same token, what does 'every character can be redeemed' have to do with getting rid of conflict? Conflict of self i a major element in all fiction, but it's not the only one. Just because a character is redeemed, that doesn't mean all conflict has been removed. Where you see boredom, I see potential for expanding one's boundaries in ways that introduce – wait for it – conflict.
Now, before you go and misinterpret everything I just said again, know that I am not saying that every character is redeemable, but I add the caveat that not every character is redeemable in every story. Where Silver might be redeemed in this one, that doesn't mean she can be redeemed in another. Same for Diamond Tiara. I think it's better to utilize characters in a variety of potential ways than to limit them to a single scope for all stories – that's boring.
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you seem to think I'm talking about you specifically when I'm talking about the fandom at large. I'm not sure what you mean by 'normal character' in the context of your reply, only that I dislike the redemption arc that is popular as it relates to Silverspoon and 'villain' characters in general. I'm sure you can develop any character study to sufficiently introduce conflict even within a redemption story arc. That doesn't make it any less boring when the resolution feels forced and out of character, which is how I feel most Silverspoon redemption stories are handled. Not specifically yours, though I do consider it to be a weak point in this story, that's all I'm saying. You can utilize your characters however you want, but not every reader is going to respond positively to your choices.
5989311
Funny, hearing someone tell me exactly what I've told countless other authors over and over again in the past. I think I'll just accept that you don't see Silver Spoon in the same way I do. Which is a pity, because there's so much more potential in her character that just "Diamond Tiara's yes-mare."
Also, because I slipped up on the explanation bit: by 'normal' I meant any character not considered inherently evil or possessed or some other thing of that nature. 'Normal' as in their path arises from their own choices rather than outside forces. Nightmare Moon comes to mind as a 'not' normal character by this particular definition (assuming you consider Nightmare and Luna to be individuals rather than one character). Or, if we were to go outside the fandom, Sauron.
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Ah, I see what you mean by normal now. Uncorrupted, or more specifically, uncompromised. It's less that I see some 'normal' characters as irredeemable and more that I like it when such characters exist. Just as in the real world there are some people that will never see your point of view no matter how well you explain it, no matter how clear and concise you think you're being, they cannot be made to understand. They just won;t agree with you, not because they are corrupted in any fashion, but because their world view is so different from your own. I see a lot of attempts at redemption on characters as more an attempt to 'normalize' them, to remove any misunderstanding that there has been in the past and enforce an artificial harmony.
I'm not saying that this is what you did in this story, as most of Silverspoon's development in that vein is done 'off screen', so to speak, and isn't developed in detail. (For all I know she was playing nice with Sweetie Belle for her mothers sake and was loathing every moment of it.) It's fine that you think of Silverspoon as more than just Diamond Tiara's yes-pony, I'm sure that is in fact the case despite there being a lack of development to that effect in canon. It's just a common trope in the fandom that irks me. Same goes for Gilda and, before it was done in the show, Trixie and Dsicord. Obviously I can't argue with canon, as much as I'd like to.
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I would recommend you read my "Lightning's Bolt" story to get a better grasp of how I view character redemption arcs, but honestly, I don't know that it's polished enough to pass inspection even if Lightning's development leads to a more unorthodox manner of 'redemption.'
Interesting story. There are some parallels here to the movie yellowbrickroad, but I think your tale has a much better execution.
I also have to admit that it is probably a good thing you pointed out that people were disappearing. I guess I would have got it eventually, but I suddenly got confused thinking "Why are they concerned about the missing boat? Was there more than one boat?"
Ok, that's... unexpected.
Calling it after the first flashback: grandpa’s a body thief that jumps from pony to pony
Post-read edit: nailed it.
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The update or the story itself? Because I’m of the mind that it fits right in with his other entries on this story, but the fact that there’s an update on it at all was surprising.
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It always disappointed me that I never added more to this collection, given that horror is one of my favorite genres. I had a lot of ideas for it, too. I was glad to see an opportunity at last to do so, and am appreciative that RockstarRaccoon was willing to let me submit the story as part of it instead of forcing me to make it an independent piece. There was another story I started writing for the contest that I pulled back on upon realizing it probably wouldn't do well (I'm feeling the same about this one, honestly), and I will probably finish and upload it to this compilation as well before too long. After all, I was halfway through it and generally enjoying it.
It was obvious at some moment.
9586647
Indeed.
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I didn't thinkbody snatcher but the obvious murder of his entire friend and family network served as a great distraction
This is pretty lovecraftian here. It reminds me heavily of The thing on the door step with the expulsion and the exchange of the souls between living and dead. Very good work, I love it!
Also, I was shocked that I missed the update. 😱
A good and proper psychological horror brr...
🥶
I was halfway expecting this to be something Luna or Discord cooked up to teach her a lesson. I also considered the possibility that the shadow being was something that Fine or Fleur could have done.
Still, this story did have a certain creepy factor to it, maybe not as well articulated as in the story about the lake or some other psychological horror fanfiction I have found.
I had a very bad feeling when he drank that drink....I was right...
Brrrrrrrr
Sweet to Eat.
The candy mare, except her mere presence isn't an end of the world scenario. i like it.
the mantra i like more than "nightmare night, what a fright, give me something sweet to bite" in some ways.
as for the 2nd story, it was a good read, kept me interested the whole time.
aaand i won't lie i skimmed the first one, it didnt catch my attention all that well