It was a bright and sunny day, and Starlight Glimmer was painting a scene of Ponyville Park.

Well, not exactly painting. She had a canvas set up on an easel, and several different primary colors of paint. And she was in Ponyville Park, right by the happy little hill that fell down into the happy little riverbed. And she had subjects.

The subjects, all thirty two of them, fillies and colts and grown adult ponies and a few village elders as well, stood locked in place by Starlight’s magic, forming a sort of living canvas of their own. they grumbled and groaned, but mostly stayed silent, being locked in place by magic and thus being unable to move their jaws.

Around that moment, Twilight Sparkle happened to walk by, a shopping bag over her shoulder, an extra-large unicorn-pink-drink frappucino trailing close behind her.

She paused when she saw thirty two of her friends and neighbors frozen in place atop the happy little hill by the happy little riverbed. They appeared to be depicting some sort of battle, though who was fighting what was tough to tell.

Then she saw Starlight and the canvas.

“Starlight,” she called out, “what are you doing?”

Starlight squealed and ran over to Twilight. “I’m realizing my potential as an artist!” she said, throwing her arms around her friend and summarily dragging her over to the canvas. “I was trying all morning to realistically depict the struggle between chaos and harmony in a painting, but I realized I couldn’t really draw a straight line all that well, and my pony shapes were kinda lumpy. Not good for the socialist realism style I was going for.”

“So...”

“So, I found a few willing and consenting friends--” she shot the frozen crowd a withering glare, “and now I’m using magic to solve for my artistic inadequacies!”

Twilight’s brow furrowed. “How exactly are you doing that?”

Starlight beamed. “Let me show you.” Without another word, she lit up her horn. Swirling magical beams extended to the crowd, the canvas, and the cans of paint. There was a tremendous ca-click like the shutter of a giant’s camera falling, accompanied by a great flash of light.

In another instant, it was all over. The paint cans had been drained, and on the canvas was a masterful interpretation of the battle of harmony and chaos, stylized as a conflict between a Pollock-esque Discord and an army of socialist realist ponies.

Starlight cheered. “It worked! I’m an artist!”

Twilight took a closer look at the painting. The crowd of stylized friends and neighbors marched in perfect lock-step, driving spears through Discord’s paint-splotch heart.

The canvas was also screaming very quietly.

Twilight leapt back. A droplet of her possibly-coffee drink flew onto the canvas and dripped down, smearing the pretty little river so it ran into the pretty little hill.

“Hey,” Starlight said, “be careful!”

“That painting’s screaming!” Twilight cried.

“Yes, it just screams with majesty, doesn’t it? I don’t know how the painter’s guild will react to being made redundant, but if they survived the invention of the camera, I’m sure they’ll survive me.”

“No. It’s actually screaming.”

“Don’t be silly, Twilight, it’s not actually screaming. It’s just a metaphor.”

Twilight grabbed Starlight by the ear and dragged her right up to the canvas.

Starlight paused, went bug-eyed, and leapt back. “My painting is screaming!” she cried.

“Yes, I know!”

“Why’s it doing that, Twilight? What’s going on?”

The shock and confusion caused Starlight’s magic to slip. The pony subjects of her great battle began to melt out of place like Dalian clocks.

“Can we go?” one of the ponies said as the magic encasing his head gave way.

“Not yet,” Twilight said.

“Can we at least stop holding this pose?” another pony asked.

“No,” Twilight and Starlight said in unison. Starlight redoubled her efforts, and the melting magical ponies straightened back up again with an audible grunt of pain.

“Okay, we can figure this out,” Starlight said, pacing back and forth. “What’s causing the painting to scream?”

“What kind of spell did you use? You didn’t accidentally animate the canvas, did you?”

“No,” Starlight said defensively. “That would explain the screaming though. Imagine being born out of the blue and someone pours paint all over you.”

“Focus. What spell did you use?”

“All I did was take a mental photograph of the background, copied it onto the canvas, then copied the three-dimensional ponies onto a two-dimensional surface, taking into account local shading and light sources.”

While Starlight explained herself, Twilight’s face got paler. “When you did that, did you use a rendering of the 3D space?”

“What? No, I just made an exact copy and put it onto the canvas.” Starlight paused. “Why? Is that bad?”

The frappucino twisted in Twilight’s gut. “If you didn’t make a rendering, that means you made an exact parallel universe copy of that scene, then squished it into a two dimensional canvas.” Twilight glanced over at the crowd, still frozen in their battle pose. “That means that canvas is now a pocket dimension, and there’s an exact copy of all our friends and neighbors frozen in it.”

Starlight let out a nervous whinney. “I didn’t mean to do that! I just wanted my lines to be straight!” She glanced at the canvas, then the frozen crowd. She lit up her horn again, and the magic holding the crowd together disappeared all at once. Thirty two ponies tumbled in a heap down the happy little hill into the happy little riverbed.

The ponies in the painting, however, didn’t budge.

“Why can’t they move?” Starlight asked. “They’re not frozen anymore.”

“Have you ever tried to move in two dimensions?” Twilight asked.

“No.”

“Neither have they! They don’t know how! Nopony knows how!” Twilight inhaled her frappuccino in pure panic. “What are we going to do?”

Starlight suddenly stopped freaking out.

At first Twilight thought she’d somehow frozen herself. But as she looked on, a strange half-smile came over Starlight’s face.

“What? What is it? Did you figure a way to get them back?”

“Not really,” Starlight said. Her voice was slow and syrupy sweet.

“Then what should we do?”

Starlight turned to her suddenly. “We should put this in a museum.”

Twilight was momentarily too stunned to reply. “A museum?”

“Yes, we do. But until we find a way to help them, we can’t just toss a blanket over them and put them in an attic. We can’t destroy the canvas. We have to put it in a museum.”

“Starlight...” Twilight searched around the cavern of her mind to find the right words to appease her friend. “Do you really think this deserves to be in a museum?”

Starlight paused. “What does that mean?”

“I mean, I guess it’s novel in the sense that it’s real ponies trapped on a canvas. But the subject matter’s already been done to death. And the style is--I don’t know how to say this right, so I’m sorry in advance--it just doesn’t make sense.”

“It makes perfect sense! Chaos and harmony are embodied not just by their respective avatars but also by their respective styles.”

“But the styles are so jarringly different. It’s like you got one painting to invade another.”

“It’s a battle!” Starlight pointed to her subjects, her friends and neighbors, trapped in valiant struggle on the happy little hill. “The styles themselves aren’t important, it’s that they’re both trying to dominate a single canvas, and one style is winning.”

“They don’t belong together,” Twilight said. “That’s all I’m trying to say.”

“We’re still in a postmodernism framework, whether you like it or not. That means style isn’t God. This is legitimate expression.”

“Of course it is. And you’re my friend, and I’m glad you’re taking an interest in art. But maybe you should make Discord the same style as the rest of the ponies.”

“Twilight!”

“You could try it, that’s all I’m trying to say! Maybe not by trapping our friends in a two-dimensional prison. Maybe with watercolors. That would be nice.”

“What would be the point of portraying chaos and harmony if I painted them the same way? They’re fundamentally different.”

“You can express that difference in more nuanced ways. Have you checked out the stained glass battle of harmony in Canterlot? The style there is positively Gregorian, but you still get a sense for Discord’s maleficence without the jarring stylistic change. I know one of the gallery curators. I could get you a guided tour.”

The canvas stopped screaming for a moment, then redoubled its efforts.

“Oh, listen to that,” Starlight said. “They’re coordinating their screams.”

“Do you think they can see us?”

Starlight peered at the canvas. “Y’know who would have a great answer for that? The curator at the Canterlot Metropolitan Art Gallery.”

“Starlight--”

“They’ll know how to get our friends out for sure. They deal with cursed art all the time. Did you know nearly half of every piece of art in every museum is cursed? Artists must really have it out for the rest of us.”

“What if they don’t know what to do?”

“Then they’ll take expert care of the painting until we can figure out what to do.” She paused. “Maybe they’ll even display it.”

Twilight sucked up the last of her frappuccino and compressed the cup until it was a microscopic ball of carbonized ash. “Okay. We go. And as soon as we get there we’re going to the stained glass in the castle. I’m gonna show you how a master artisan enforces stylistic cohesiveness without sacrificing artistic intent.”

“Fine. But I have a few things in the Canterlot Met to show you too. By the time I’m through I’m gonna liberate you of those antiquated opinions.”

“Fine. And then we’re gonna liberate our friends from the painting.”

“Right.”

A crowd of thirty two soaking wet, sore, unhappy little ponies climbed out of the happy little riverbed, grumbling and mumbling and spitting curses.

“My art’s gonna be in a museum,” Starlight said, beaming.