• Story: Precipice


    [Dark][Sad]

    Author: Whip Lash
    Description: With Discord defeated and the sanctity of Equestria restored, a new entity stirs. An ancient enemy is about to awaken... and when the precious Elements of Harmony are simply not enough, Twilight and her friends must throw away their lives in order to come face to face with the single greatest threat that Equestria has ever known.
    Precipice

    Additional Tags: Evil, Changes, Equestria, Forever, Long

    41 comments:

    1. Yay! New Story! -hugs-

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    2. Hrm... Throw Away seems to imply their lives were no longer valuable, while risking seems to imply there was chance that they would still have lived. So maybe sacrifice is a better description?

      I wouldn't know, I didn't read the fic. I don't read grimdark. I was just kinda caught off guard when the story description popped up on RDN.

      < Obligatory balloons comment.>

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    3. I didn't rate the story either, btw. The fact that this has two one star ratings so shortly after posting has me worried if those people who rated it actually read it to have a real opinion of the content. o.o

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    4. Seth, could you track down the IPs of the people who are one-starring stories moments after they are posted, and siteban (or at least publish) them? This is becoming a very regular occurence and it's time for it to stop.

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    5. @Caerdwyn

      As irritating as that habit is, I don't think that's wise.

      Folks are technically free to rate however they please, even if it's arbitrary or unreasonable.

      There are also, I might add, tons of folks who hand out 5/5's like they're popcorn. I don't think they should be banned, either.

      As time wears on and ratings pile up, the "real" opinion of the masses becomes clear.

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    6. I'd also like a clarification on that line, if the author would be so kind. "Throw away their lives" implies that they pull DBZ-style senseless sacrifices or something to that effect.

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    7. Or perhaps a simpler approach might be to disable ratings for half an hour or so after posting? Most stories need at least that long to read. Don't know if that'd stop reflexive one-starers, though.

      A geekier approach might be to make available the number of votes for each star-level, so that it would at least be obvious when there's a spike of outliers.

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    8. "Throw away their lives?"
      "Grimdark-Sad"
      "Evil"
      "Forever"

      Oh my... this somehow sounds like something that I would not enjoy...

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    9. this has nothing to do with the story but, seeing the banner has made me think, what would fluttershy be in her kind and mean personas?
      star sapphire and red maybe?

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    10. I agree with the notion that the term "throw away their lives" implies that the Mane 6 will all die, and probably in a meaningless and/or undignified manner. If I had to chance a guess, I'd say that's why the star rating is so low perhaps?

      That said, I did read over the story. It's not bad. Certainly not worth the star-bombing it received.

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    11. @zero 1343

      Kind would be Star Sapphire
      Cruel would probably be Sinestro Corps. Discorded Pinkie seems more Red Lantern to me, given how angry she was.

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    12. Alright... I've gone ahead and read the first chapter and I have to say... well I'm not exactly impressed. It's not really very impressive when, in only the first two pages, Celestia, the steadfast, benevolent ruler of an idyllic society, basically implies that the only thing they can do is give up.

      The rest of the story with Spitfire... it wasn't bad, but it seemed to drag, and all it did was continue seeming to say "storm's a-comin!" over and over.

      Okay, yeah, I think we figured that out with the whole "Pillar of Dark Magic" thing.

      That said, it's not badly written or anything. Although I gotta admit, the story seems tailor made to piss off the majority of Bronies. Nothing much has happened in that first chapter, but the first impression I got (see above) is probably the first impression a lot of bronies got. And it's not doing anything to attract readership if the immediate one-starring is any indication.

      Also, if the guy the Princesses are talking about is Tirek, I'm going to blow a gasket. It was cool when Mines of Dragon Mountain did it, but now it's gotten old. Just saying.

      Anyway, call me hesitant. The story hasn't done anything to suggest it's going to turn too much for the worse at the moment, but I can't help but think that, with those tags and with that description... this is not going to continue to sit even the slightest bit well for very long...

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    13. Couldn't help but notice that it's tagged. [Dark] not [Grimdark]. I think people need to read the story "THEN" comment. As of right now I'm about half-way through and I'll say that this story is fine.

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    14. @Saddlesoap

      Except it's not a rating of the story. The people downrating it cannot possibly have read it in one minute. It's a petty act of sabotage, not a review. It's designed to hurt, not to critique.

      I've been on the receiving end of behavior like that. People may think it's funny, but it's not. It's a demotivator. There is a reason you haven't seen anything from me recently: a fandom which thinks behavior like this is acceptable does not deserve the dozens of hours of effort needed to create these stories.

      I've said that pony-fandom is starting to resemble f/chan, otaku and furry fandom before, and it's not for the prurient (look it up) focus. It's because the members no longer look out for each other, no longer treat each other decently, no longer give the slightest thought to copypasting others' works without asking or crediting, and is becoming a battleground for the irrelevant prize of King Of All The Fans. Love and tolerate? Universal love and tolerance means you end up with people who exist only to harm others dominating the scene, and once that happens you can't go back. The pony-fandom is losing the spark that made it unique; it is becoming just another TV show audience (albeit a big one), and it's happening because the fans are abandoning the very thing that set pony fandom apart from the others to begin with.

      Love and tolerate those who deserve it. Show the door to the rest. Don't appease the trolls with "don't poke them or they'll do it more"; out them, name names, publish accounts, ban the griefers. Don't think that this fandom is an exception to "Once you pay the Dane you're never rid of him"; there are NO exceptions to that. Fandoms that do not protect themselves are devoured from within, every time.

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    15. @Caerdwyn

      As one of the people who 1-starred this story shortly after it went up, I take strong offence to your suggestion that my rating was, "a petty act of sabotage...designed to hurt, not to critique."

      I opened this story almost as soon as it was posted. I read through the first page, on which (I've just gone back so I can give an accurate count) I encountered 13 (yes, thirteen) mechanical errors, ranging from comma abuse to incorrect punctuation coming out of quotations to simple tense slippage. I try to be forgiving of the occasional slip-up (even with editors and pre-readers, we all make mistakes), but more than a dozen errors on the first page alone? Not stylistic choices, not 'alternative options,' but flat-out mistakes? To me, that is wholly unacceptable. I felt that the best way to reflect my dissatisfaction with the product was a 1-star review, and I stand by that decision.

      It's entirely possible that some people gave this a 1-star without reading any of it first, or based solely on the 'throw their lives away' line that has everyone in a tizzy, but I don't think it's fair to assume that just because someone gives a poor rating means that they're a troll or somesuch.

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    16. @Caerdwyn

      I see it too, but if you'll allow some speculation, I think we might not have to worry about it for too much longer.

      I think the issue there was that the fandom, in general, was incredibly antsy to the point of incredible discontent waiting for the next season to start. And I think once the next season really gets going, this sort of behavior SHOULD calm down.

      It should... on the other hand there's a possibility that it could get worse. I worry that some fans might get too caught up in the fanon and the show itself could end up being a source of major discontent around some fans. It'll be a real problem when Luna comes into the picture if she isn't how the fans have always portrayed her.

      The thing is, we've built up something sorta like a bunch of jenga blocks, and we keep on adding more and more to the top of it, and with the continual delay of new content it's starting to buckle under the weight.

      I also somewhat blame the newfound prevalence of Grimdark fics. You cant deny that there seems to be something of a surge in them lately. On FiM Fiction nearly 7 out of 10 fics carry the dark label and you can't move around this site at all without running into one every two seconds. And as much as I will admit that some Grimdark fics are good (Silent Ponyville and the first Sunset come to mind), this sort of content is so fargone from the original, fluffy show that we fell in love with that it splits the fans in half between the people who want to have feel-good adventures and the people that want to see "what-if" scenarios where the characters are forced to grow and deal with hard times, and neither side is really wrong in there stances, but they can't get along well. And the first group is angry that there are so many grimdark fics, and the latter group wants the previous group to leave them alone. And this has all happened in the absence of new content.

      We're putting unnecessary stress on ourselves is the problem. By building up our fanon so much, by waiting impatiently for new content, and by inadvertently/unnecessarily dividing our fandom on issues (and grimdark is only one issue... Nyx from Past Sins comes to mind as another example) we start to slowly break ourselves apart.

      And there are some users who think it's lulzy to do this or otherwise don't care. One I can think of... mycutemarkisagun... can't keep his mouth shut when somebody mentions they don't like Grimdark and starts ranting about babies and how he's "defending the honor of Grimdark" (like it needs defending) and other such nonsense. Nobody begrudges him for liking this stuff but by throwing out unnecessary comments without thinking he puts everybody on edge. And he's just the first user that comes to mind here.

      And some stories, like this one, work in exactly the same way, saying things without thinking in a purposeful effort to be provocative and stir up trouble. The way it says "throw their lives away" in combination with the tags and the word "forever" and stuff like that. It's undoubtedly trying to stir up trouble, just like fics like Sweet Apple Massacre, Night of the Shy, and Generosity (though it certainly isn't quite on the same level, the idea behind it is the same). And people respond in turn. And then the shitstorms start.

      If we want to get out of this, we need to stop building up so much tension and as a whole be more patient. We need to start thinking before we post comments. We need to stop being as self centered in our actions and comments among each other. And we need to stop purposefully trying to get a rise out of each other like this.

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    17. Not to defend one-starring stories that one hasn't read, but there might actually be some useful information to be gleaned from this bad behavior. Perhaps fandom, or at least the segment of fandom over here on Equestria Daily, is getting turned off by the amount of grim and sad stories that are coming our way.

      I know I for one rarely read stories with [grim] tags and have been sighing in disappointment lately whenever I see another such story pop up on the front page. I haven't done any sort of analysis to see whether they're really increasing over time or if it's just my subjective perceptions, though.

      I wouldn't suggest preventing stories from being accepted due to grimness, but maybe there's a way to increase the number of non-grim stories getting through to balance things?

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    18. Harrumph. Well, since this apparently got ratingsbombed [edit: or quite possibly not, based on later comments], I decided to read it, despite usually passing on Grim/Dark/Sad unless they're a few chapters in or hailed in the comments section. Here are my thoughts as I read.

      -Intro bit. The language/prose is... kind of not so great here. "...was disturbing their, otherwise peaceful, banquet." You don't need the commas in this sentence. Also, "didn't take a being of perceptive ability to see..." is not the most awkward phrasing I've ever read, but it's not poetry neither. It reads like you were trying to avoid cliche, which is generally a good guideline, but the phrase falls very flat.

      [cont'd - did the max comment size become smaller? Sorry in advance for multipostiness...]

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    19. Okay, not continued. I can't post anything of halfway reasonable length for some reason. And I'm not breaking up paragraphs.

      The tl;dr - get an editor, please. Couldn't finish the story despite best efforts. Didn't rate for this reason.

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    20. @Dusty the Royal Janitor

      You beat me to the punch and were much more eloquent in the process. :)

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    21. @Dusty the Royal Janitor
      I am really hesitant to stir up more derailing commentary in a thread about a specific story, but I wanted to point out that a quick use of the smart search on Fim Fiction indicates that about 242 out of the 769 posted stories have the Dark tag. That's a lot closer to 3 out of 10 than 7 out of 10.

      On EQD, the filter on Grimdark says about ONE story in 10 is Grimdark (though that does, to be fair, not include the odd permutations like GrimLight, etc).

      I actually agree with you that death, gore and despair are "sometimes foods" in Pony fiction, but I did want to make sure things don't get blown out of proportion.

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    22. @Saddlesoap

      Would be interesting to graph these things over time. My entirely subjective impression is that we're in a bit of a grimdark surge lately.

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    23. This is great! After "Past Sins" and Cupcakes I didn't know what to read. And here it is, awsome story about some "ancient Evil(tm)". Gonna read))

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    24. This comment has been removed by the author.

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    25. This comment has been removed by the author.

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    26. I loved the story.
      I hope that you'll finish this story despite the fair amount of negativity.

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    27. People should read this story: it's better than the last couple of 5 starred stories I've read today.

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    28. @Saddlesoap

      Huh...
      Very well, I concede that point. Although I must wonder the curve the stories follow... exactly how many of them are from some time ago and how many of them are from only the past few months.

      That being said... alright, I admit to fault in my numbers.

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    29. I would agree that we are indeed in the grips of a grimdark surge. But I do not think it is necessarily a movement within the
      fandom, but a natural outgrowth of the increase in the fandom as a whole, and especially the ED readership, as evidenced
      by the "50 million" banner just posted. I am something of an adventurer gamer. Being generally bored with shooting and
      hacking at things (not necessarily without their place, just not my personal cup of tea), I tend to gravitate toward those
      games whose resolution consists of puzzle solving. In so doing I am always on the lookout for the latest puzzler and try
      to keep up with what is being released. What is being released I must say is tending greatly to themes of horror, murder,
      evil entities and scary stuff in general. It sells. And as the adventure gaming public grows, it proliferates. Apparently it is
      either what a sizeable portion of the population wants to see, or it is just simply easier to sell the provocative than the
      simply well-crafted mystery. Whether what we see here in Pony stories reflects tastes, or expectations or a combination of
      those and other elements is a mystery in itself. Yet I think from what I have seen in other worlds of fantasy and fiction,
      the continued growth of our fandom will continue to insure more grim and darker material. We simply are not who we
      once were, nor are we likely to regain that carefree happy space. I just thank Luna (and the stars) that on Saturday
      mornings my life gets just a bit lighter.

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    30. Please excuse my ridiculous formatting. It is just what I deserve for having cut and pasted my comment :(

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    31. I read it. I liked it. I didn't LOVE it, but I liked it.

      Grimdark stories as a whole have a sort of love it/hate it reaction from the fans. Me, I personally don't read a whole lot of fanfiction in general, so I'm not bothered by the major output of sad/grimdark. I do care about those who do however, and I strongly respect their opinions.

      As for the story itself, it's nothing too different from what we've seen before. The writing was good, and I think this document has probably been updated since it went up, because I actually didn't notice a good deal of grammatical errors. However, it did drag a bit, as many others complained, and as a result, the first chapter ending up being long without saying a lot. Detail is good, but too much detail can be just as bad.

      Now, I wouldn't say this story has been "doomed from the start." I personally think this is a solid opening for a story, and with a bit of revision, I'm quite certain the next chapter can be an improvement in comparison to this one. Keep the detail, but try to give some more actual STORY.

      Conclusively, I have given this chapter a four out of five.

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    32. I honestly can't get much insight into this story with just what has been published. It's all very dark and foreboding, but whatever plot the author has in mind is still hidden.

      It sounds like by "throw away their lives," the intention was to convey that the Mane 6 would "abandon their lives."

      One thing I can glean from just this first chapter is that the author has some degree of talent and plenty of potential for the rest of this story and future works. If it get's updated I will certainly follow it, which is something I won't say for most stories that make EQD.

      Having said that, I noticed immediately that the story needs some editing. Some of the grammatical errors in the prologue were elementary.

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    33. Oh, wow. Though this is only the first chapter, I have a feeling it's going to be one of my favorite stories on here. I hope to see the rest. :D

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    34. Ooh, this is intriguing. I'll have to check it out.

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    35. "Its" can be spelled without an apostrophe. This is actualy the correct spelling a surprising amount of the time. These are facts.

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    36. @Dusty the Royal Janitor

      Okay, Grimdark fics or not, THAT RIGHT THERE is what makes this fandom worthy of gathering 50 million hits.

      Where else would you see a response that mature and tolerant on the Intertubes?

      Truly, I salute you. :)

      *starts a slow stomp of applause*

      But at any rate, yeah, I must admit I am curious about trends in fics. Grim, silly, shipping - does like breed like? It merits analysis....

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    37. A new super-hyper-duper 'Ultimate Evil Bad Guy', who's even more powerful than the previous super-hyper-duper 'Ultimate Evil Bad Guy', who himself was more powerful than the previous one ?
      ( Infinity > X > Discord > Nightmare Moon)

      It's starting to look like DBZ ?

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    38. Why wasn't Rainbow Dash hopping up and down and spouting off about how she was going to kick its ass as soon as she heard that Spitfire was attacked? She's a very gung-ho character; just witness the way she charged the dragon in Dragonshy.

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    39. Quite an amazing set up. If this is how dark things start it chapter 1, I can only imagine how serious things will be in the future... and we don't even know who this threat is. I look forward to reading the next chapters!

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