Life is characterized by a parade of inevitabilities that eventually ends in death. It is inevitable that the sun will rise and the days and months and years will pass according to their cycles. It is inevitable that we must eat and breathe and sleep and do any number of everyday things. It is inevitable that we must live, until such time as we don’t anymore.

In Que Sera, Sera, Twilight Sparkle and her friends are sent back in time through a magical mishap. They learn that they cannot return to the future, and they are eventually presented with a choice to make tremendous sacrifices in order to ensure that the future they knew comes to pass. There is an air of inevitability to the whole affair, to be sure. Yet, Que Sera, Sera is not meant to be a story about inevitability or stable time loops or fatalism: it is a story about all the gaps between the inevitable, the choices people make, and about love - all the things that make our lives individual and remarkable.

In this story, Twilight Sparkle is a pony who is filled with love, first for her mentor Princess Celestia and her friends, and eventually for her husband and daughters. This abounding love guides her decisions throughout the story, such as when she lets go of her fear of harming the timeline and builds a life for herself in the past (alongside her friends), and when she makes her ultimate decision to try to save the future. It is not the case of a “self-fulfilling prophecy” or a time-loop that occurs regardless of the intentions of the characters; rather, Twilight and her friends must knowingly make the choices that they believe are best, for the sake of the future, and those choices are predicated on love. While it may seem that this story is about facing a destiny that is set in stone, it is really about how powerful and eternal love is, how it makes our inevitable lives remarkable, and how it can allow us to make the hardest decisions imaginable.

Que Sera, Sera is my most popular story. I think that’s true because the emotional connections between the characters, and the motivations for their actions, rang true for many readers. In any event, I’m honored and thrilled to have my story featured in the “One-shot” group.

One thing that surprised me about Que Sera, Sera, was that numerous commenters were interested in seeing a sequel. When I wrote this story, I thought it would be difficult to conceive a story less suited for a sequel. If I contrived a mechanism to bring back Twilight and the girls, it seems to me that the impact of the original would be considerably softened. If I were to continue the story of Spike and Celestia, it would be so disconnected to the original story that it would not be a sequel, but merely a quasi-related, separate piece of fiction. If I were to write about Celestia and Luna having a heart to heart about their past, well … that is actually worth exploring. I think, though, this story is best left just as complete as it is. I leave it to the readers to imagine what comes next.

Another interesting point is that a few readers wanted to know more about Twilight’s mentioned-in-passing, late husband Morningstar. The story reveals his name, that he was a pegasus, and his coat color, and little else beyond the fact that he is dead. This part of Twilight’s life, where she fell in love, had her children, and then lost her husband (somehow) are completely omitted from the story. Why? Well, largely because I didn’t want to go for immaculate conception, but I didn’t want to make this story about Twilight’s romantic love - it’s a story about familial love for her children and her friends.

A few readers really hated this story. These readers form a small minority, but they have been vocal with their dislike. Some have argued against the possibility of stable time loops, because they provide no explanation for the origin of the first loop (which, I guess, presupposes that time is linear and not circular or existing at different points simultaneously). Others were upset that Luna is marginalized in this story. Others felt like Celestia and Spike could have thought of some better solution over the long centuries they had. I’m sorry to say that I can’t fix these problems. In truth, they don’t really bother me.

Personally, I’m more troubled by the fact that this story lacks a real twist or surprise. Instead, it is clear early on that the train has been set on its track, and it’s not stopping until it slams at full steam into the last station. Even the artwork pretty much gives away the most important plot point. I think, though, on some level, the sheer obviousness of it all actually works in the story’s favor. Like a car-accident shown in slo-mo, everyone knows what’s going to happen, but keeps watching to see the how and why and where and the what-next.

Many more readers really liked Que Sera, Sera, which surprised me and for which I am tremendously grateful. I’m glad to have contributed something that people found meaningful, and to have been, and continue to be, a part of this wonderful fan community.

This story came about oddly, as most stories do. Something I have noticed about writing fiction is that ideas for fics typically explode from nowhere. Most authors are not like Harlan Ellison, renowned for his 1800+ short stories and works on television and film, granted with the ability to simply materialize a well thought and articulate story in an hour's time. Seriously, he wrote an award winning short story while sitting in a radio station waiting room just to prove he could. Most authors struggle over their works for days, week, or months and poor time into the work, carefully grooming it into a form that is clever, full, and acceptable. Unfortunately, I lack subsequent time to dwell over a single idea for a length of time and cannot simply sit down and write something.

My ideas come from random space. A word misheard, a stray thought, or a phrase that strikes me oddly and then suddenly manifests into a possibility for a fic. Typically, my thoughts wander creatively in one place: the shower. Something about the hot water seems to stir my thoughts and a multitude of fragmented images, sounds, and words will overtake me. Most of my stories come from there. Authors such as Joe Lansdale use dreams as story inspirations, keeping a journal by their bedside to hastily scrawl their dreams down before they disappear, as dreams do, within the first few moments of waking. I try to dash, soaking the carpet in the process, to the computer where I can type up whatever new idea has sprung from the steamy shower. Our Love, Eternal, was no exception to this.

Let's start with some assumptions. I dislike shipping. It doesn't make sense to me. Most shipping relationships are insane and the possibilities of the characters involved are ridiculous. The plots are predictable with no struggle or dragon to battle. Character A is obviously going to be with character B and the path to the relationship is muddled only by one failing to admit the feelings they have for the other. We get 10,000 words of character A blushing, beating around the bush, and becoming jealous as character B sees other suitors while we roll our eyes and anxiously tap a finger in irritation. "What will Pinkie think when she finds out I'm gay for her? Will she hate me? I feel so ... so scared." That's another thing. Almost all shipping is a lesbian pairing. Based off of the fiction, we can only assume Equestria is doomed to fall due to dwindling population as only about 5% of its inhabitants have the ability to reproduce. What does this mean? It means the pairings are purely masturbatory in nature, which also leads to the poor story developments. The "story" simply facilitates the clop within. It's aggravating.

I write dark stories. Dark fiction has been my passion since I was old enough to read. Short story collections such as "Scary Stories for Stormy Nights" and "Horror Collection" have always fascinated me. To see the monsters that lurk just across the barrier of the mythological world, waiting to pounce and drag us to our demise, are what interest me. Thus, "The Twilight Zone", "Tales From the Crypt", and "Tales from the Darkside" are the style of story I write. What does this have to do with "Our Love, Eternal"? Everything.

I decided to write something a little different than my normal stuff. Twist endings are great, but I wanted to something else. I had read a blog post about another shipping story coming out featuring characters I don't think would ever go together under any circumstances and while letting my mind wander an idea sprang forth. Why not take everything that are staples of shipping stories and flip them? It was what I had been looking for, something a little different but with a deliciously dark backdrop.

Shipping stories are usually about two characters getting together. One will be head over hooves in love while the other is clueless to the affections being put upon her. By the end, they have discovered one another and have become locked in a meaningful, loving, relationship. One that will presumably last forever. How do you twist that? Simple. Instead of starting them off apart, Applejack and Rainbow Dash (The only pairing I think even remotely makes sense) are already together. Their love is one of reality. They fit together. Their jagged ends just happen to connect to one another. In this case, they are together because of their individual fetishes. One loves pain, craves it, needs it and the other enjoys punishing, hurting, degrading. Alone, they are miserable outcasts of society, aliens to the world. Each cannot relate to normal ponies and are slaves to the desires that ostracize them, but together they are free to indulge in one another's passions. Their loves is stronger than that of any other couple because only together can they feel sane or normal. Their desires are enacted with the other and it gives them a sense of being that is indefinite but pure. They need one another.

As the story unfolds, we find that the dragon is the impending break up. Rainbow Dash has become distant, returning to her private Hell and causing AJ's happiness to disintegrate as the love she feels erodes. The story is told through AJ's point of view because we can relate to the feelings of uselessness when someone important to us becomes distant. We don't know what the other is thinking and can only hope that things will improve. We can attempt to avert the coming disaster, but sometimes our efforts are in vain. We, through AJ, connect to that hopelessness, that unknown, that pain. For those who have not read it, I will not go on about the plot. Suffice to say, it is a love story. It's just a different kind of love story.

On a more literary level, this story deals with our mortality. The greatest battle we have in our lives is accepting out finite lives. At some point we will all die. This story is about AJ's struggle to accept her eventual death. Dash represents acceptance. One can only truly be happy when they accept death as a natural end. This is a key point in mythology and psychology. Many of the problems we face as humans stem from our inability to face death as it is, normal. This is the story about how Applejack comes to terms with her mortality.

darf: So, there’s a lot I could say about this story.

The main thing is, there’s something to get out of the way first of all. That being: AP and I are porn writers. I’ve done other, sfw stuff, and so has AP, but the reason we decided to work with each other (aside from really enjoying each other’s company) is that we had an idea for something salacious and wanted to see if we could bring it to life.

Then some other stuff happened.

As is a theme with a lot of my writing, and AP’s as well, we sort of got sidetracked along the way. We had a few discussions about the story in the process of composing it, some more heated than others, many of which included what the point of the story was in the first place. We were both aware that splitting the focus of something between two camps of appeal is usually a death sentence for a story and any meaning it might hope to achieve, as is the case with the previous stuff we’ve done in that vein. It doesn’t make friends or please readers when one half of their brain wants to jerk off and the other half wants to sit in silent philosophical contemplation. That said, we barreled forward anyway, and ‘Not Now, Big Brother’ is what we came up with.

Part of what got into my head while we were writing was the specific nature of what we were describing. We could easily have sat down, penned some generic twirape, and left it at that, but the inception of the idea itself wasn’t really ‘rape’ – at least not in the traditional sense. The whole point of NNBB – at the risk of dismantling it completely – is the nature of conscience, and the ways we circumvent it. I wrote a long series of comments with a disagreeable individual on my blog post about the story (which you can read if you don’t mind internet bickering, because I think I pretty eloquently summed up why I feel the story has value), but the crux of the meaning behind the story is that life is ugly. Not in a soul-crushing, complete endpoint sense, but at least in the sense that good people (or ponies) do bad things, and sometimes even love, amongst family members, or people you care deeply about, can be something awful.

There’s been praise for the story for communicating the idea of rape in a visceral, uncompromising fashion, and I hope in the end that’s what we did. If there are people that get off to that, I can’t fault them, but I definitely hit a turning point half way through the story where I thought ‘God, no one is going to want masturbate to this’. I think that may have been a good thing, in retrospect. In reality – like, REAL reality – rape isn’t something attractive, especially when it happens like this. It’s the most diabolical, upsetting, compromising act I can think of, and that’s what AP and I ended up focusing on for this story. It’s unapologetic in its portrayal of rape, and I think that’s kind of the point.

One or two people have said that, if we wanted to condemn rape, or talk about the ramifications of it, why didn’t we do a story about the after-effects, or a deeper analysis of the repercussions on twilight’s psyche? The answer to those people is that we didn’t want to do that, nor did we attempt to. Rape is more complex than a guilt or burden, especially when it’s perpetrated by someone you care about. It’s a horrifying weave of obligation and trust and misguided affection and all the other things that go along with that, and as a result, this story is much more about love than it is about rape. It’s just about the not so pretty side.

I could talk about the themes and particulars of execution on the story for a good while longer, but this is probably more than enough, especially with AP’s part alongside. In summation, I’ll say that I couldn’t be more thrilled with the people who ‘got it’ – and, to everyone else who hates the story, whether for personal reasons, or because they feel it’s still generic rape porn, that’s okay too. The only point I take issue with is people telling me what the purpose of the story was; because, as the writers, AP and I are the only people who are certain of that, and we know what we wanted to say.

Appleloosan Psychiatrist: With a lot of the response to this piece being largely "this was awful and terrible but very well done", one would assume that that might be what darf and I set out to do with this piece, initially. That is, write something vile and evocative.

It's not really the case. If you have any experience with our work in the past, you'll quickly realize that darf and I are, at least in our sexual proclivities, deviations from normative behavior. That is to say, we're sick fucks.

Being huge fans of each other's writing, we quickly got it into our heads to work together on something. After spitballing ideas back and forth for a while, we stumbled across something that both clicked for us. "Wouldn't it be hot as hell if Twilight begged her brother not to cum inside her?"

From that simple scene, we extended outwards but quickly met roadblocks. We didn't just want to write a generic rape fic, and, even if the idea was initially to write porn, we found a mutual desire to have a deeper undercurrent with this. At the risk of sounding presumptuous, darf and I both (usually) like to have a more complex conceit with our stories, even if they're supposed to be mostly about sex.

Of course, this became a compromise. How far to lean in one direction? In the end, I think we made an undeniable shift away from porn and towards having a message. Don't get me wrong, this fic is still kind of hot for me, but we definitely took a huge step away from the salacious language and erotic descriptions that porn authors so typically engage in. To use them would be to destroy the verisimilitude of Twilight's perspective, and thus they had to go. It made this story less porn, but in the end, I’m okay with that.

So, then, what is the message of this story? I’m a bit loathe to deconstruct it so readily, because I don’t think that an author should engage in that kind of destruction, but the theme of this story is wrapped up in the concepts of ‘rape’, ‘family’ and ‘love’.

Violent rape is one thing. It’s one thing for a person to be completely powerless despite their every desire, and to be physically forced against their will. However, this story addresses the reality that it’s not always like that. Rape is very often committed by people who we thought loved us, and isn’t done through brute strength.

Twilight, however, isn’t completely powerless. She could scream and scream and her parents would come to her rescue. She could throw her brother off of her with telekinesis. She could, even more simply, just TELL someone about this. Tell her parents, tell Celestia, just someone who could step in and put a stop to this. However, for a pony like Twilight, which is easier? To confront the reality of the situation – to acknowledge and make public that, yes, this is happening, yes her brother is doing this to her, would completely demolish the otherwise calm of the rest of her life. It would be to acknowledge to herself without tergiversation what is happening to her. Isn’t it easier to just endure, to suffer through this for a few minutes every other night, but when it’s over she can pretend it never happened and that Shining’s back to being the kind big brother she knows he really is at heart?

I brought this to darf’s attention post-facto and I think it bears mention here: We never used the word “rape” once in this story. Don’t get me wrong – what Shining is doing is rape, and he’s an awful stallion for it. However, would Twilight acknowledge it? If someone straight up asked her “Is your brother raping you?” what would she say? What if they began to to question her further – ask whether she gave consent, ask about why she didn’t tell anyone? What would she say? What could she say? Even though Twilight’s misery was more of a focus of this fic, I think it’s worthwhile to consider how Shining feels. Does HE think or know that he’s raping his sister? Does he still think that, despite all her protests, that if she really had a problem with it, she’d say something more?

It’s that confusion and conflation of conflicting emotions that darf and I tried to tap into here. It’s a scary and difficult topic, to be honest. We can love and trust someone so much that we can easily rationalize away all the awful things that they do. We made Twilight’s experience sound as miserable as we possibly could (and based on the response, I think we succeed in that part, at least) but that confusion of emotions is what still had her saying “I love you” to him when it was all over. He’s still her best friend in the world, and they still love each other very much.

Even if he does some bad things sometimes, he doesn’t mean to hurt her, she knows. He’s still her B.B.B.F.F.

Hi guys! Thanks for giving me a few minutes of your time. Just gonna warn you, spoilers past this point. I don't want to get all repetitive, so here is my first interview about this story. So I'll try not to repeat that stuff here.

First off, I do want to clear up one thing I've seen a few people say. I get a lot of "it's Fluttershy. She never survived falling from Cloudsdale." While stories, especially this one, can have different interpretations, I have to say this one is wrong. The whole point was that our not-pony always was a changeling. If Fluttershy's the changeling, then she either fell (as a changeling) or somehow manipulated Dash into remembering that. It's implied she's had to meddle with ponies's minds before and that the thought of doing it again makes her sick.

Moving on. Many people try to logically work out who it is. Some claim Dash never would shift blame to Pinkie like that or that AJ would never lie, so it has to be Pinkie or Flutters or Rarity. I always had reasons for them to feel the way they did if they were or weren't. The two most common ones for people to logically eliminate were Dash and AJ.

If it is Dash, she's scared. She's not so much trying to deflect blame onto Pinkie, as use Pinkie as a sounding board. When she talks to Twilight, she's trying to see how Twi takes it. When Twilight gives her an answer that isn't "burn the witch", Dash goes to Pinkie to see how she reacts. Pinkie is probably the most mentally flexible of the six. She's able to make mental leaps and hold points of views that would cause the others' head to implode with the cognitive dissonance. In my world, Dash knows Pinkie well enough to know this. Stranger in a Strange Land used the verb "grok". That's a tiny aside, but it's important (maybe) to see what I mean when I say Dash and Pinkie know eachother. When Pinkie explains that, even if it is her, it's no big deal, Dash is getting the reassurance that when Pinkie finds out it's her, it won't be a big deal. Between the two of them, Twi and Pinkie solve Dash's insecurities. You know, if Dash were the changeling.

If it's AJ, you have the whole problem of >Honesty. There have always been two camps on what honesty is, even before MLP. One camp holds that truth is absolute and an honest person will never lie. "Are there sharks in the lake?" one might ask. An absolutist would say "no" if there were merely man eating crocodiles in the lake. The other holds that honesty is more than that and would call the above person dishonest. It's a spirit vs letter debate and I certainly won't solve it. Suffice to say, if it is Applejack, then she is still honest because she isn't faking who she is. She's not pretending to be the loyalist of friends and most dependable of ponies (except the pony part, I guess.) As Batman put it, "It's not who I am underneath, but what I do that defines me."

I won't bother really doing the rest; the case for the other three has been more widely understood by those that have already read this. If you do have questions, or just want to regale me with your interpretation, go ahead and email or PM me, or post on my profile.

As I said in the interview, this fic was always meant to glorify their friendship. It's a case of friendship conquering fear. I guess it can be loosely compared to "coming out of the closet" fics. If I'm being totally honest, there is also a bit of deliberate trolling. The thought of a fic where you're told one of them is a changeling, and then never find out who tickled my fancy simply because of the FUUUUUU- it would generate. I took the idea seriously and will vehemently disagree with any who claim it's a better story with a true reveal, but there was a tiny desire to cause frustration present in the ideas inception.

I must say, that this story ended up being a lot better received than I thought it would. I was pretty certain that the non-revelation would turn many off. It became a bit of an issue. Despite what I said above, this fic quickly turned "serious" for me. I did not want to see people upset about the ending; I wanted them to get it. The fact that so many did get it, and even liked it, really gives me hope. I still think that friendship is one of the fundamental forces in the series and really like when it has a part to play in the resolution of a story. You might notice a similar >friendship theme playing a minor note in the ending of my more famous fic, Twilight's List, but it's present in Storm and even some of my less mentionable stories. I guess, if I were pressed into a corner and forced to explain it, I'd go with FRIENDSHIP IS MAGIC DAT TITLE DROP.

I should probably end this pretty soon, as it's getting quite long. I want to thank you all for reading this and the story. I'd like to thank G-AB Acid and the One-Shots group for featuring this and letting me ramble on about it. I really would like to thank CloudySkies and TAW again. Without the support of good friends, I'd never being any fic to conclusion as I'm always convinced it's crap once I hit the halfway point.

Thanks again for reading and I hope you actually read the story first!

The idea originally struck me when I saw that picture of Pinkie Pie when it was posted in a forum by the now named "NecroBrony". The picture had Pinkie with a flat mane, typically representing that she is either depressed, or (in the fanon) about to murder somepony. Seeing that picture reminded me that you should trust in people when they say they're alright. If you're concerned for someone ask, and have faith in their answer. If they lied, it will show through in time.

The reason this struck a chord with me was because I had been struggling with depression for ten years. However, and I know this is going to sound cliche, but it's true, since entering the community as a writer and active participant, my depression has been in remission, even without medication. This worried my parents at first, and they were worried I was going to relapse, after two months off of anti-depressants, I can happily say that I'm still not depressed. However they were still concerned about me, I'm a closet brony, and I wasn't comfortable telling them about why I was no longer depressed.

The fiction as it is now almost didn't occur. Originally I had planned it as a 1022 word oneshot. However, I forgot to mark it as complete and I received multiple demands in the comments to continue. I went on to create three more parts. The second part was to show that Pinkie wasn't a psycho, the third part was to show she still laughed and was fun loving, and the fourth part was the resolution where her outward appearance is accepted by her friends after some difficulty. After it was done, I decided to format it so that it would meet Equestria Daily guidelines. I coalesced the four chapters into one big one. I haven't been accepted int EqD yet due to some grammar issues, and so I have it in the middle of being proofread for grammar. I hope that once that occurs, I get into Equestria Daily, it would be good to know that I can produce something that is enjoyed by others, and hope to continue to do so.

It's a real testament to the artist of the cover art that their picture was able to inspire in the end, not 1000 words, but over 6000.

The prompt that was responsible for me writing 'Art of the Dress' (or 'Expectations') was a quite simple one; "Rarity falls in love with a dressmaker". It was chosen at random from a series of similarly simple ideas for a writing contest between myself and some other writers of the (at the time) /co/ MLPG. Somehow, despite the overtly simplistic nature of the prompt, the idea for 'Art of the Dress' sprung to mind almost immediately. I didn't want to write something simple, so I settled for writing something so introspective I wondered if anyone would understand it in the first place.

There were compromises taken with the story - certain parts were hammered out to be a bit more decipherable, specifically the ending. Upon rereads, I also notice that I do tread a bit too heavily into the stereotypical 'purple prose' - if I was to rewrite the piece, I might try to make certain sections sound more natural.

The thing about the story, and the reason I think it's the best piece I've written since joining the fandom, is that it tackles ideas larger than the ones we can view at face value. It doesn't contemplate love - it disassembles the idea of love. The whole narrative is an attempt to encourage the reader to question the notion of perception and purpose, and what it means for us to define goals intrinsic to our existence. Even the skewing of the original prompt is adherent to this sort of meta-cognitive reflection; Rarity doesn't fall in love with a dressmaker, she falls in love with the 'idea' of a dressmaker, or rather the idea of the fulfillment of her own expectations. Expectations, as we learn through Rarity's descent, are the most treacherous elements of our psyche.

I tried to accomplish a few things throughout the story with my use of language; key phrases that become idiomatic through repetition (much like the definitions of our pursuits in life - it becomes so simply through willing ourselves that it is so), visual allusions and fragmented narrative styles that are meant to make the whole story seem kind of surreal, with a fever-dream type of quality. Again, no part of it is handled perfectly, but I think what it accomplishes as a work of fanfiction is ambitious enough to be commendable.

I'm not sure if, in the end, the story amounts to more than a giant question: "What is the nature of our expectations?" - but I think at the very least, considering that notion is a noble pursuit. I hope that people, upon reading the story, manage to get out of it at least some of the ideas I tried to inject as I was writing it.