I'm not a monster. . . well, technically, I am
Author's note:
You know that feeling, the one where you feel like you're going to lose all your followers, piss everyone off, and have no one read your stories ever again?
I've kind of had that regarding this chapter for a while. Part of me just wants to replace half the dialogue with "Then the human Sunset said stuff that didn't matter to the story." But then the unspoken stuff that does matter would have no context.
So this chapter has just been sitting around done for a while because I've felt uneasy about publishing it.
The one person not to treat her terribly was the native version of her, which was fine, and was now, having seen Sunset's face, apparently terrified, which was less than ideal. The other her had scrambled backward until she was stopped by a wall, and, as of when Sunset looked away from the pitiful sight, was pressing back into that wall as if she hoped the bricks would give away so that she could retreat farther and further.
Sunset just looked at the ground and waited for things to somehow get worse.
Then came a frightened, “What are you!?” from the other her.
Sunset sighed. Then she looked back at the other her. I’m a transmogrified unicorn, did not seem like an ideal answer. Before she could think of anything that was worth saying, the other her started talking again with a speed clearly driven by fear:
“There is no natural way you could look so much like me, you couldn't fake it, and –even if you could– why would you? Why would anyone want to steal my identity? I hardly have an identity to steal!” the other her caught her breath, and the way it sounded made Sunset worried that the girl might be on the verge of hyperventilating. “So the only options are the ones that don't make sense, and none of those are good!”
Part of Sunset knew that she should pick her next words carefully.
If she just came out and said that she was a creature from another world who took on human form in this world –except for that one time she had been a demon– as a result of a magical portal, that would likely do more harm than good.
Right now, part of Sunset knew, she needed to carefully steer the conversation into a direction where the other her would be comfortable, keep it there for long enough for the other her to calm down, and do it all in a way that wouldn’t destroy trust when the truth inevitably did come out.
This was a time for a delicate touch and a sensitivity to the other her’s feelings, part of Sunset knew.
That part, however, did not remotely win out.
Most of Sunset didn’t even care about the other her. It was still focusing on everything else that had happened of late.
Sunset had been abandoned by her friends in a way that turned the entire school against her, with her closest allies deeming her irredeemably guilty in the public forum that was a high school hallway and pronouncing her the kind of scum who deserved to be left in tears on the ground.
Now everyone was against her at every turn, and she was constantly taking flack for something she didn’t do, even though whoever was framing her was doing an incredibly poor job. Everything she’d worked for had been torn away from her not because someone had set into motion a meticulous and well executed anti-Sunset Shimmer plot, but instead because the entire student body, her so-called friends first in line, were so very ready –eager, really– to believe she was despicable that they’d turn on her at the first sign, however poor of a sign it was.
If her supposed friends had confronted her in private then at least she wouldn’t have the whole school against her. She apparently wasn’t worthy of that luxury.
If they’d given her time to think she could have pointed out that the fact she still had her phone didn’t mean no one else had ever had access to it. But no: one question, ‘Have you lost your phone recently,’ and she’d been judged guilty before she even knew she had been accused.
Compared to all of that, what did one frightened doppelganger really matter? The terror was obviously the other her’s problem and Sunset really shouldn’t have to deal with someone else’s baggage right now.
So said the part of Sunset that did win out. As a result she didn’t try to approach the situation with any care or even any tact.
“Calm down,” Sunset said exactly the way she would have before the Elements of Harmony, “I’m not one of the evil double things from . . .” and her sarcasm and disdain hit a roadblock: she didn’t actually know what they were from. That break allowed her to calm herself down a bit.
After a taking metaphorical step back and reminding herself that the other her wasn’t responsible for any of what had happened to her and thus shouldn’t be mistreated because of it, she finished up by saying, “that anthology show,” in a neutral way.
“The Twilight Zone,” the other her said, “the anthology show is called 'The Twilight Zone'.”
The other her hadn’t been calm when she said that, but compared to how she had been a moment before making the correction . . . maybe there was still room for handling this well. The correction was the way that one might say, “Khan was a Sikh from northern India, not an undeclared from southern England,” which implied a degree of familiarity with, and passion for, the subject.
Steering the other her to a topic where she was comfortable and keeping her there until the fear subsided might still be an option.
So Sunset said, “I've never actually seen it,” as though they were simply having a normal conversation.
“I have,” the other her said. She paused a moment. “These days Sandwich actually makes decent coin through underground parties –he's a really good MC– but back in the day spending a night in a hotel room was enough to wipe out the entire group's savings. Emergency Only.”
Sunset nodded. She did both because breaking the other girl’s flow might negate the calming effect she was hoping the conversation would produce, and because it did make sense. It fit with the image of the other her she was building in her head.
Hotel rooms were expensive, and the clothes the other her was wearing suggested poverty; rich kids slumming never really pulled off the kind of authenticity that radiated from those threadbare clothes. Living on the street fit with that.
“My second year on the road,” the other her said, settling into a normal storytelling manner, “long before Sandwich even joined the group, we got caught in a damned blizzard. The streets weren't safe and we didn't know the territory enough to find a good spot. We weren't even supposed to be there.”
Sunset wasn't sure exactly how one got snowed into a place you were never supposed to be in the first place, but it didn’t really matter and she was sure she could come up with plausible explanations if she were to try.
What was more important was that the other her got visibly more at ease with every passing sentence.
So Sunset listened and watched.
“So the five of us were huddled in a one bed hotel room, and there was a Twilight Zone marathon on. Shadow said I was too young to watch, so they kept the TV off until I pretended to go to sleep.”
Part of Sunset’s mind immediately wanted to dissect all of the possible implications. The other her was too young to watch a scary show in her second year on the road, that could be used to guess when she originally went on the road. Someone named Shadow was the one who decided the other her was too young. Leader? Parental figure?
Sunset had to quash that line of thinking. A lot of progress has been made in a handful of sentences, but things weren’t good yet. Even the telling of the story was indicative of things being not right, it was the kind of rambling, to a stranger no less, that bespoke nervousness at best.
The wrong approach could still send the other her back into a panic. The safe move, the option with the minimal risk, was simply prolonging the conversation in its present form.
So Sunset offered up, “And you watched it without them noticing,” with a bit of a conspiratorial tone. That got a nod. Strike one against continuing the conversation in its present form.
Sunset tried to gauge the other her. It was probably safe to talk about other things, but that opened up the minefield of trying to guess, at random, which topics were safe and which were not. Sunset definitely didn’t want to dive into the weirdness of the present situation just yet.
She wanted something normal, mundane, and completely casual.
Again she took the easy route: making a second attempt to sick to the original topic.
“Was it good?”
“A lot of it was cheesy,” the other her said, “some of it was funny –even some stuff that wasn't meant to be funny like the scout for an alien invasion getting warned off of invading the world by the other aliens who were already in the middle of a secret invasion– some was heartwarming –the show had more happy endings than people give it credit for– but some of it was really, really creepy.”
A flash of fear, not nearly as bad as earlier, crossed over the other her’s face. Maybe Sunset should just give up on avoidance. It was the perfect way to move toward the subject at hand without taking it on directly, after all.
“The doppelganger episode,” Sunset offered, knowing it could potentially ruin the degree of calm that had been achieved so far. It was a risk she was willing to take if it could get passed the point where she was trying to use her manipulation powers to calm the native version of herself while kneeling on the sidewalk with the feeling of freshly dried tears on her face.
Besides, the episode was something the other her had apparently experienced while young. Even if it wasn’t the source of the fear Sunset was seeing now, it likely played a role, and talking about it might help.
“It takes place in a bus station,” the other her said. “This woman is moving from point A to point C and the bus station is at point B, where she's having a stop over. Things start going strangely, people say she did things that she's pretty sure she didn't do, she thinks she saw an exact duplicate of herself standing behind her when she looked in a mirror.”
The other her was still in storytelling mode and still seemed to be getting more calm the more story she told. No real indication how much of an effect the episode had had, but the parallels were easy to spot.
The other her had to be from somewhere else, like the character, since Sunset would have found her before now otherwise. The other her had probably already run into people who thought she was Sunset.
Ponyfeathers.
The other her had probably already taken abuse for being Anon-a-Miss, and unlike Sunset she wouldn’t even have known why. And Sunset had responded to her by being sarcastic. Maybe Sunset was going back to her old self after all.
The other her just went right on talking:
“For most of the episode you don't know if there really is a doppelganger or she's just losing her mind.”
The words were largely unremarkable, but they were said with an urgency and gravity that drew Sunset in and for one fleeting moment she actually forgot that the only reason this conversation was happening was to get the other her more comfortable and less fearful.
Sunset herself settled into a different position, sitting instead of kneeling.
“Her faith in rationality gets shattered and she relates a story she'd never believed in before. There's a universe of evil beings that sometimes comes in contact with our own, when it does some cross over. The only way they can survive is by stealing someone's life.”
There was a similarity to actual human changeling myths there. Of course, in those myths the doppelganger killed their double, as a baby, so that the double wouldn’t turn up try to take the stolen life back. Equestrian changelings never killed the ones they replaced. Even though they were undeniably real, something that couldn’t be said of the changelings from human myth, Equestrian changelings were far less frightening than the human-world version.
Still, there was more to do than just analyze some story that had been made before she’d been born. She needed to alleviate the other her’s fear, and while getting her talking had been the start of that, actually engaging her in conversation would push things further in the right direction.
“Thus the setting,” Sunset said. “She's in a place where no one knows her.”
Just like the other her was now, of course. Except the present situation could be considered worse because Sunset already had an established life here. As if Sunset had stolen the other’s life before the other her even noticed there were two of them.
Still, they were passed the point of avoiding the issue.
The other her nodded and resumed talking:
“And going to a new place, so the people there won't catch on to any early mistakes the doppelganger makes. All that needs to happen is to take her out of the equation, and the doppelganger steals her life and, because the doppelganger is there in place of her, no one ever comes looking for the real her.”
Well, at least that part didn’t matter in the least. At least Sunset was pretty sure it didn’t matter. Unless . . . No, it didn’t matter.
“Plus, the very first thing that happened, before there was any suggestion of a doppelganger, was her bag going missing, so she doesn't have any proof as to who she is.”
Sunset figured that that mattered just as little as the part before. She’d tried to find the human with her name after Twilight told her that everyone seemed to have a double, not just Celestia and Luna as she’d initially suspected. There was nothing. The other her had obviously lived a life off the grid, which meant she wouldn’t have any identifying documents to steal.
The other her took a deep breath, then continued:
“The male lead in the episode, just a random guy who happens to be at the same bus station, doesn't believe a word of it but tries to help her through what is obviously some kind of breakdown. The audience doesn't know for sure what kind of breakdown. Is she imagining all of this, or is she having a hallucination-free nervous breakdown because an evil being intent on her destruction has been gaslighting her the entire time?”
Sunset allowed herself to do stop doing meta analysis and just think about the story as it was being told. Mostly she did this because there was, what seemed to be, an obvious problem with creating that kind of narrative ambiguity: “Wasn't the show sci-fi and fantasy? Wouldn’t that give some clues?”
“Not all of the episodes were,” the other her said.
That was what Sunset got for talking about a show she’d never watched.
“There was one episode in particular where the real twist at the end was that it was all in the main character's head and nothing out of the ordinary was going on,” the other her continued.
“That's disturbing,” Sunset said. If you couldn’t trust your senses then . . . it was just disturbing.
“Very much so,” the other her said, “but the edge got taken off by the fact that the main character of that episode was a horrible person and his delusions were karmic punishment: tormenting him with the same lie he'd intended to torment others with.
“In the doppelganger episode, the main character is just an ordinary person who has done nothing wrong. That makes it so much worse.”
Sunset nodded.
Celestia had given lessons about the just world fallacy. The short version was that ponies who believed that bad things only happened to bad ponies were often afraid of the implications of the alternative. If bad things happened indiscriminately, then avoiding them would have to depend, at least in part, on luck. If luck were involved then complete safety was impossible.
Rather than face the reality that one could never be totally safe, some ponies would convince themselves that bad things only ever happened to ponies unlike themselves. One easy way to do that was to believe that only bad ponies suffered, so the fact they were good (a foregone conclusion) meant that they would never suffer.
While the lessons didn’t apply directly to the work of fiction in question, the indirect implication was clear. Monstrous things happening to a monster is justice. You don’t have to fear them unless you’re in the habit of tearing apart friendships or stealing magical artifacts. Monstrous things happening to an innocent is frightening. They can happen to anyone at any time.
They can happen to you.
Back in the present the other her was wrapping up, at least Sunset thought she was.
“When it's finally time to board her bus, she sees her own face in the window. That's too much for her. She faints, and the bus leaves without her. She's convinced that she has to make it to the destination first, so that people will know that she's the real one. Male lead says he has a friend who can drive her.”
“Lie?” Sunset asked.
“Lie,” the other her answered. “She's taken away to be institutionalized.”
“Has it occurred to no one that maybe the reason people are afraid to seek mental health help is because treatment is presented as some hellish ordeal?” Sunset asked. For whatever reason, this was a topic that made her very upset. It was, perhaps, the reason that, for all her bullying and manipulation, she'd never set out to gaslight anyone.
“The show is a half century old,” the other her said. “Things were bad. Not as bad as they'd been in earlier times; definitely worse than they are today.”
“And it's not like everything is perfect today,” Sunset said.
And then Sunset realized that that entire exchange had gone definitively not-bad without her calling on any of her manipulation skills. Progress was being made.
“Yeah, so the episode had basically ended and you still don't know whether she had a breakdown and imagined the doppelganger, or whether her breakdown had been engineered by a real, and really evil, doppelganger.
“Well, the episode started with her bag going missing. So how does it end?”
Sunset had no idea and motioned for the other her to continue.
“After she's taken away, the male lead reaches for his briefcase. It's missing, but he catches sight of the thief. He chases, but with a head start, the thief gets away. Cut to the thief: someone with his face running with an expression of absolute, perverse, glee.
“Thus proving the evil doppelgangers were real, nothing was in her head, and a sane –if stressed out– woman has been institutionalized because everyone else thinks reality is a delusion.”
Well, that could explain reacting with abject terror. Then again the episode could have simply touched on fears that would have been there regardless. Most people probably weren’t prepared to run into someone who shared their name and face regardless of the anthologies they partook in.
Sunset wanted to say something that was nice, and helpful, and not at all evil, but instead what slipped out was the kind of thing she’s say in the old days when she was preying on insecurities and generally unnerving people who weren’t useful to her:
“Disturbed you, did it?”
“Like you wouldn't believe,” the other her said.
It was said with calm. That was a good sign. Not a ‘Tell her you’re a monster from another universe who steals magic gemstones and mind controls people,’ sign, but a good one nonetheless.
“Well,” Sunset said, “I have no intention of gaslighting you.”
It was true, sincere, and totally avoiding the subject of her inhuman nature.
“Who are you?”
“My only name is 'Sunset Shimmer'.”
“Not helping with the whole, 'Not an evil doppelganger,' spiel,” the other her said, but the playful delivery implied that the talking had worked. Worked far faster than Sunset had expected, even.
Still, might as well say it out loud.
“But we have reached a point where you're not terrified by my very existence anymore, right?” Sunset asked.
The other her nodded. “Yeah, yeah we have.”
Sunset stood up and offered the other her a hand. It was a sign of how much progress the tangent about the anthology show had produced when the other her took the hand and let Sunset help her to her feet.
“You are going to explain though,” the other her said.
“I will,” Sunset promised, “but before we even start to talk about that, I have an question of the utmost importance.”
“And what's that?”
“You really travel with someone named 'Sandwich'?”
“That's what you took from all of that?”
“It's a distinctive name.”
“Cheese Sandwich,” the other her said, “and he can turn an MP3 player and a glowstick into the greatest rave in history.”
“I've never been a rave person,” Sunset said.
“I'm not either, but I can't argue with an emergency fund we've never tapped out, and that's the result.”
Sunset wanted to tell the other her that it was time to start talking about the explanation, well, technically why the explanation would have to wait, but she'd get to that. She wanted to, but found she was presented with an entirely different problem.
“This isn't going to work,” Sunset said.
“What?”
“'Hi, Sunset, I'm Sunset,' Sunset said to Sunset,” Sunset said to the other her.
The other her nodded. “I can see how that would be a problem.”
For a while both were silent, then the other her said, “Well, this is your turf, so I suppose you can have the name 'Sunset'.”
“And what will you be?” Sunset asked.
“Shimmer, I guess,” the other her said.
“Do you think of yourself as that?” Sunset asked.
“No,” 'Shimmer' said, “but my best friends, Shadow and Sandwich, go by their last names, so it's not like the idea has no merit.”
Sunset didn’t really like the idea of stealing someone’s name.
“This may be where I live,” she said, “but you arguably have a stronger claim, so if you want–”
“I'll go by 'Shimmer',” Shimmer said. “Now get to the explaining bit.”
“Ok,” Sunset said. Then she stalled. “So . . .” she stalled again.
The next words came from Sunset very quickly:
“You know how it is when someone says, 'You wouldn't believe it,' and you're all, 'Yes I will, just tell me,' and they're unconvinced, but you keep on insisting you will believe it, and then they finally give in and tell you, and–”
“You don't believe it,” Shimmer finished.
“Yup,” Sunset said. When she continued she spoke at a more normal pace, “To avoid that mess, I'm going to need proof you can see, and for that I'll need help, so I won't be able to give you an explanation for,” Sunset waved her hand between them so it pointed at herself and Shimmer several times, “this, until sometime tomorrow.”
Shimmer seemed to think it over for a bit, then said, “Fine, you have until tomorrow.”
Sunset gave a nod of acknowledgment. She was about to walk away when she realized that she was missing critical information. “Where are you staying?” she asked.
“I got into town this morning,” Shimmer said, “I've spent most of my time being weirded out by the way people have been looking at me and the fact people knew my name. I haven't exactly been perusing the local real estate market.”
“I'm gonna head home,” Sunset said, “you might as well come too. If you like it, you can stay with me.”
Sunset started walking; Shimmer followed.
“You have until tomorrow to explain how you can be another me,” Shimmer said. “For now, why don't you tell me why people were calling me 'anonymous' as if the word is an insult?”
“Not 'anonymous',” Sunset said. “'Anon-a-Miss.'”
“What?”
“Anon hyphen a hyphen Miss,” Sunset said.
“Some kind of stage name?” Shimmer asked.
“Internet screen name,” Sunset said. “Someone is pretending to be me and doing everything short of saying, 'I'm Sunset Shimmer'.”
“And what are they doing while pretending to be you?”
“Spreading secrets,” Sunset said. “At first it was ones that I'd have access to, part of pretending to be me, but now it seems like anything goes.” She sighed. “The thing about secrets is that they're secret for a reason.”
“People don't take kindly to having them converted to public knowledge,” Shimmer said.
“Exactly,” Sunset said. This was the first time she’d been able to talk about this with anyone. It was so much better than every other time the matter had come up. At best she was talked atrather than to, at worst . . . she’d cried a lot of late. “The people who have been burned are outraged, others are cheering it on, but everyone is angry with me.”
“And why would someone set out to frame you?” Shimmer asked.
Because I turned into a demon, turned them into thalls, and planed to use them to invade another universe in hopes that, since they were innocent children who weren't acting of their own free will, Celestia would refuse to allow them to come to harm, thus making them untouchable and allowing them to hold the line against troops with significantly more experience, while I and my two willing accomplices, in demon pseudo-Alicorn mode, defeated the immortal rulers and took possession of Equestria.
Not the best answer to open with, and it didn't explain everything. Plus it left out the crap she'd done before stealing the Element of Magic. Anyway, it wasn't true so much as a snappy response that made it sound like she had a handle on the situation, which she didn't. The truth was much less impressive.
“I don't know,” Sunset said. “I mean, I sort of know, but the timing doesn't make sense.”
“What does that mean?”
“I used to be a horrible person,” Sunset said. “Most of the school had reason to hate me, but no one did anything like this when I turned my life around and all of that was fresh in their minds. Back then they just did the usual high school stuff. I was variously ignored, glared at, made the constant subject of whispered conversations, and continually 'accidentally' bumped into in the halls.
“It was all pretty generic, and certainly didn't involve anyone posing as me,” Sunset said. “I finally proved that I really had changed, helped everyone in the school in the process, and now this happens. Just when everyone was finally accepting me.”
“Maybe that's the point,” Shimmer said.
Sunset just gave a questioning look.
“Oh come on, it makes sense,” Shimmer said. “More sense than you having my face and my name.”
“A lot of things make more sense than that.”
“Everyone hated you, and you were miserable–”
“I never said I was miserable,” Sunset said, not entirely sure why that made her feel defensive; “I was holding up pretty well.”
“And so long as you were miserable,” Shimmer continued, “the people who hated you thought you were getting what you deserved. But then you 'proved yourself', whatever that means, and suddenly you're not suffering anymore. Anyone with a grudge feels like you're not getting the punishment that you're due.”
“So they give everyone a reason to go back to hating me,” Sunset said. It made as much sense as anything. If she’d somehow proved herself to the school before the Dazzlings showed up, maybe she would have had to go through the exact same thing not long after that.
“Not everyone,” Shimmer said, “just the people who only accepted you because they were giving you the benefit of the doubt. People who truly forgave you and believed you were a better person would need more than a bully with an internet account before they thought they were wrong about you.”
Like maybe photos that came from my phone. Sunset shook her head. That didn't matter at this particular moment. There was an important question that did matter:
“Why do you believe me?”
Shimmer had nothing but Sunset's word, they'd only just met each other, and apparently Sunset's mere existence called up fears dating back to Shimmer's childhood. There didn't seem to be any reason for Shimmer to believe that Sunset was actually innocent.
“I found you sobbing on the ground protesting your innocence,” Shimmer said. “It made an impression.”
“I found you cowering against a wall afraid that I was going to steal your life.”
Shimmer shrugged. “Off moment.” They walked in silence for a bit, then Shimmer asked, “What's your home like?”
“Like Heaven on Earth,” Sunset said, “just . . . more rusty.”
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Great as usual!
wonder what the proof would be?
Much appreciated.
(Though my biggest issue with the rebooted Khan is that Benedict Cumberbatch didn't exude the sense of charisma that Ricardo Montalbán did, and that charisma was a big part of making his backstory plausible.)
What if someone from CHS, the Rainbooms, or the CMC saw this? This would turn the tides very quick
Interesting. Where can this go.
I think you set up the purpose of Shimmer’s off-topic ramblings well in-story: calm things down enough that Shimmer isn’t freaking out about Sunset. In other words, I’m still following this.
Is this chapter title a reference to the song ‘RE: Your Brains’? Is so, awesome.
I like it, and personally do not find any of the dialogue irrelevant. There was some of the text that seemed a bit unnecessary to me, but honestly, I think that's strictly a personal problem.
The back and forth between Sunset and Shimmer unexpectedly took the form of a dialectic, even though it wasn't in any sort of strict (or even loose!) sense, and I really liked that.
-2 Hours Later-
s2.quickmeme.com/img/cd/cd8a9bfdb09b97a307a3734914c252ba8ae31a2c93bd976090b2722c4f182432.jpg
Well, I migth've trimmed down the Twillight's zone dialogue a bit, I did not need such a detailed summary of the episode to understand your purpose.
Still, not a problem, I can chalk it up to style and leave it be.
If I do leave the boat, it is probably not going to be a factor.
well I still here and looking forward to the next chapter.
The dialogue worked well for the scene, I think. It smothers a lot of the tension, which fits what is going on in story at that moment.
I think you’re worried about the wrong stuff in this chapter.
That is to say, you set up the reasoning for all the “irrelevant dialogue” very well. It wasn’t all that irrelevant, anyway. It was a bit long-winded, true, but it was also pretty natural, and it advanced the story.
I think you need a little work on the writing outside of the dialogue, though, as it can get mixed up and come off feeling a bit stilted, sometimes (though other times, it’s just fine). Some of it’s probably due to dealing with two Sunsets.
So far I’m interested in what I’ve read. And I’m happy to have found another Anon-a-Miss story that I won’t accidentally cut my hand on.
Chill man. It’s fine. No need to stress yourself too much.
Should be:
Should be:
Missing quotation mark at the end.
As for the story itself, I thought that having the filler dialogue tie into the doppelgänger issue and Shimmer's worry to panic at finding a clone of herself in her hometown worked pretty well. It was a good mirror to what Shimmer must have been thinking about the matter, so at least from my perspective it provided an interesting way of getting a degree access to her relevant thoughts as well, beyond just Sunset's.
Probably didn't need the whole episode in the dialogue, but you made it work well enough.
The whole 'Sunset' and 'Shimmer' thing is giving me flashbacks to writing my own 'Sunset meets her Counterpart' fic(Actually, so far I do it for all Counterparts that meet one other than Twilight
)
(because there's popular nicknames)and Pinkie(because Pinkie), though who gets which half of the name is switched back and forth.... I gotta think of versions for those with one name....Also, I now kinda crave a Twilight Zone Marathon. Stars, I think I can remember, maybe, two or three episodes off the top of my head, yet I have this nostalgia for it. Weird, right? Maybe that in itself could be an episode. A tv show you've never watched yet somehow remember. Eh, at least now I can have the opening music on loop for the rest of the night.
I feared that this story was forgotten but, thankfully you came back with a new chapter! Excellent job!
P.S. Believe it or not, I've never seen the Twilight Zone series
Glad you came back to this; I enjoyed reading it! Like 8731126 said, I don't think any of this dialogue is irrelevant - it calms human!Sunset down, it shows us more of her backstory, and it establishes both Sunsets' characters better. I like it!
8731546
Both are awful.
As a matter of fact, I do.
I'm still here, and very much still interested in the story, so you're fine.
8731122
Yes.
And I've only just now realized that there's a definite musical theme going on in titles. For the story title I didn't even realize it until someone posted "Just the two of us" by Bill Withers in the comments, and it hit me: so that's why it sounds that way in my head.
8731141
Sorry.
@Everyone saying for me to be less stressed or take it easy or whatnot:
- The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, original radio show, Christmas episode (which makes no reference to holidays of any kind and is only called that because it first played on December 24th, which is not Christmas. (The twelve days, for those wondering, start on Christmas.))
For the record, I'm glad no one's said anything about wanting to see the Shadow-Shimmer-Sandwich triad, because Shimmer is here alone and won't be calling in backup (which would be a difficult proposition all things considered), and therefore Shadow and Sandwich will not be showing up in the story.
8731314
On names, something like this (but probably subject to many rewrites and massive editing) will happen in Crossed Wires, Short Circuits, Time's Orphans, Oblivion's Outcasts, and the Rulers of Nowhere Neverwhen: The Home Front:*
For those who don't know English prefixes with Latin origins. Cis (cisalpine Gaul, cis-1,2-dichloroethene) means on "on the same side" and trans (transapline Gaul, transnational corporation, transcontinental flight) means "across".**
As the Twilights can be divided into "from this side of the portal" and "came across the portal" they'd be 'cisportalic' and 'transportalic'. Cisdimensional and transdimensional were chosen because a) you know what they mean, and b) it was agreed that they sounded better.
-
* No, you can't find it anywhere. Well, if you really want to read something, the first chapter of Time's Orphans is available (in rough, unedited, form) at my patreon. For free. It was a subscriber exclusive for 30 days; the time is up, so anyone can read it by following this link.
It won't help you understand this bit in the least, though.
The Home Front follows CHS and the happenings there instead of any of the named groups. The majority of Crossed Wires actually take place in the next timeline over ("the dumping grounds"), and while "Short Circuits, Time's Orphans, Oblivion's Outcasts, and the Rulers of Nowhere Neverwhen" all appear in great numbers in the "home" timeline, most of the related action happens away from CHS.
Instead The Home Front is about what it's like to attend or work at a high school where you've got the main seven, those people who travel outside the local multiverse in hopes of resurrecting worlds that currently never existed in the first place but once had substance (before the current timeline stabilized), Team Possible (the one Crossed Wire to appear in the "home" timeline), and a growing number of refugees from the "dozen" (Twilight's description, only seven appeared in show) deleted timelines from the Season 5 finale.
-
** As you might imagine, there are many more ways to be "across" than to be on the same side. (Why "trans-" sees so much more use than "cis-".) If you're on the same side you're on the same side and there's not much more to say about that. Cisalpine Gaul is the part of Gaul on the same side of the Alps (as Italy.) Or, for those who like organic chemistry, it's cis when the functional groups are on the same side of the carbon chain.
With "trans-", however, things get more complicated. Yes we can just say, "It's on the opposite side," for things like transalpine Gaul, or "They're on opposite sides," for things like organic chemistry , but to be "across" something doesn't need to be on the other side of something and stay there indefinitely. We can also say, "It goes across," for things like transcontinental flights. Or "It exists across," for things like transnational corporations (which straddle the borders between nations.) So if we do it in terms of sides it means "on the other side" or "crosses from one side to the other" or "is on the other side and the same side at the same time" which is way more complicated than just "across".
So:
cis = on the same side as.
trans = across, in some way or other
This has been your Latin, English, and organic chemistry lesson for the day. You're welcome.
8731872
Sweet. That’s a good song.
Typo alert!
I highly doubt this, considering Twilight goes to Crystal Prep...
"You see, I live in a junkyard with my grandfather. Don't mind the blue box, it's probably not important."
-puts story on tracking list-
Wait. I know that name. Are you the same writer of Being more than a Simulacrum?
If so, I love your doppelganger stories apparently xD
Ngl, your warning/musings at the beginning of the story had me wary for some disturbing content rather than 'might be irrelevant' content, which I didn't see either way.
Is Sunset gonna ask Twilight to pop out of the mirror? How's this proof gonna work .-.?
Looking forward to more.
Thanks for writing :)
Edit: Oh, and I appreciated the line about mental help, so /)
8738561
Yes.
I really need to get Place and Joss to Florence already. In one week it'll be precisely two years since I updated BmtaS. That's not good. They're still guests at the the Yamanouchi Ninja School after all this time.
All of my KP stuff has been languishing for way too long.
Great chapter, I think you move through an awkward situation in the only way possible without lots of screaming or physical violence.
Lol! The title is a quote from the eat your brains song!
It is a great story thus far but please continue writing it.
You could also totally add this to the Sunset from the human world group. I'm currently writing such stories myself but I only find a few of them and they seem to be scattered over this side in a very minimalistic number...
Eh. It seemed like a pretty reasonable way to continue developing Shimmer's character.
This was a lot of fun. And given the "schedule" you have laid out for the next couple chapters, it looks like the pacing will continue to be on point, too. I'm really looking forward to this one.
8739123
Hey, just curious since it has been over a year since the last update, but did you drop this story?
.... I just found this story yesterday and was enjoying myself.
9499780
It's not abandoned. My depression has just been bad for a long damn time. It was already much worse than usual when I wrote this chapter, but a couple months later it went into a state of "Even Worse" that hasn't ended yet. Recently there have been promising signs that suggest that's ending, but there have been signs before, ans they were always harbingers of false hope rather than recovery.
So I can't say when the next update will come. In the state I'm in right now, writing only comes in completely random bursts. In theory, if one of those happened and were focused on this story, I could have the next chapter up very soon. In practice the next update is unlikely to come until my depression is back under at least some control.
Here's the plan for the next few chapters:
Chapter 3: Sunset showing Shimmer her home, the two getting to know each other a bit. (Shimmer as point of view character)
Chapter 4: Sunset and Shimmer at CHS, where Shimmer gets up to speed on Anon-a-Miss (Sunset as POV character)
Chapter 5: Sunset takes Shimmer to Equestria where they meet with Princess Twilight. (Shimmer as POV character)
9505482
Good to know. Thanks for the reply,
Hope things get better for you.
As long as you are planning to release chapter 3 then the story is not dead, I will wait for it
This got me interested, hoping there'll be an update sometime.