Fanfic / A Dream

The Cutie Mark of Plymouth Valiant.

A Dream is a former Self-Insert Fic turned Crack Fic Human in Equestria story written by totallynotabrony. The story chronicles the adventures of human turned earth pony Plymouth Valiant, a patriotic, robot building, tequila growing, sociopath. The story is taken on an episodic basis coinciding with episodes of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, with Valiant's effects on the plot steadily increasing over the seasons. While in the earliest chapters the changes where minimal, just a few snarky comments here and there, things slowly escalated to the events of "Magical Mystery Cure" and beyond, where now some episodes only have a single reference to the original plot.

Updates usually come a few days after episodes air, depending on how much they affect the story.

Other stories in the "Dreams-verse" include:

More Dreams, updated during a hiatus or to explain something in the main story.

Wet Dreams, which is Valiant and the Mane Six exploring on their boats.

The Adventures of Trixie if Her Father was a Badass Alien, which shows what Trixie was doing while Valiant was in space.

The Adventures of Cyborg Braeburn, a comedy about Braeburn dealing with being turned into a robot.

The Vampire Cheerilee spinoff series.

No relation to that one Minecraft speedrunner.

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A Dream provides examples of:

• Added Alliterative Appeal: Valiant once described himself as an "absolutely asinine alliteration activist."
  Valiant: Don't snub the SNUT, you slut.
• Answers to the Name of God: After coming back from space Valiant claims to be God. And now after his apparent death whenever someone says "Thank God" there is a booming "You're welcome" from the sky in Valiant's voice.
• All Just a Dream: True to the story title, Valiant holds this opinion of what's happening for roughly one season. Once he realizes its all real is around the same time things start to get weird.
• All Love Is Unrequited: Braeburn. Though, when your love is an AI that was deliberately programmed without emotion or free will, this tends to happen.
  • Also it took Valiant almost a full season to notice Sunset was in love with him. Subverted in that once he finally noticed they more or less became a couple right there.
  • Fluttershy has stated that she doesn't really love Pinkie Pie. However as Pinkie is a borderline Psycho Lesbian, Fluttershy is too scared to tell her.
• Alternate Universe: He travels to a few of these using a literal Macguffin rock.
• Anti-Hero: Plymoth Valiant. He's killed countless ponies, hijacked an American warship, ordered to have an admitted Jerkass castrated because he disliked him, yet has saved Equestria repeatedly, even if some consider his methods a tad extreme.
• Anyone Can Die:
  • Played with. While this series does have a very high bodycount, it mostly consists of characters with only one appearance in the show. The two key exceptions to this are Twilight and Valiant, and even they came back eventually.
    Discord: She's the main character, she can't die!
  • The build up to the Season 7 finale has a lot more characters killed off, although, since the season ended with the universe rebooting, most of these are undone.
• Artistic License – History: When explaining things about Earth, Valiant repeatedly puts events through the lens of fighting communists. Whether or not fighting communists was a real-world goal of whatever he's talking about.
• As Himself: A number of celebrities have appeared in the story, with about half of these appearances resulting in the death of the celebrity. Lana Wachowski is a regular character throughout season 7.
• Ascended Meme: A common occurence due to the author's use of Audience Participation. One example would be the phrase "Valiant did nothing wrong".
• Ass Shove: Rainbow and Guinness got tired of Zephyr Breeze hitting on Rainbow. Guinness held him down while Rainbow shoved a lawn gnome up his ass.
• As the Good Book Says...: Downplayed. The only time Bible has referenced something biblical is shortly after he's formed, and it's less to teach something and more because Rarity turned into a pillar of salt, and he was pointing out that there is precedent for this kind of thing.
• Audience Participation: Events of the story are regularly shaped by the commenters in the episode prior. This can range from referencing someone's joke to having an entire army of commie-ponies set up in the ruins of the crystal empire.
• Awesome Mc Cool Name: When the protagonist is initially asked for his name, he starts trying to think of something cool. He comes up with Plymouth Valiant and decides he could've picked worse.
• Batman Gambit: One of Valiant's specialties. He put Twilight through an elaborate mystery where the answer was "Plymouth Valiant", knowing it would enrage her and he could use that rage against their enemies.
• Battle Couple: Valiant and Sunset. Trixie and Daring when they're not... busy. Also Guinness and Rainbow, assuming Rainbow didn't make him stay home and keep an eye on the kids.
• Brain in a Jar: When building Tin Mare, Valiant literally just hooks a robot up to a brain. Cue much panic from Twilight as she tries to get him to say whose brain it was.
• Brick Joke: A staple of the comedy as part of the author's love of the Long Game. One-off gags come back in a big way.
• Brutal Honesty:
  • Valiant pulls no punches in telling the truth to anyone, so long as it suits him.
  • Tin Mare does this occasionally too, being a robot and all.
• Cloudcuckoolander's Minder: Twilight has repeatedly been this, both with Valiant and more recently with Cordoba. Results are mixed.
• Comedic Sociopathy: Thanks to Valiant's actions, the entire world runs on this at this point. In the side story More Dreams there was a character named Lieutenant Dandy Sprite, who got run over by a tank, had all her legs amputated, just for a Forrest Gump reference.
• Comically Invincible Hero: Valiant has been: struck by lightning twice in the same day, survived serious alcohol poisoning, fell from the sky to punch Sombra in the face, cut his way out of a hydra's stomach, the list goes on and on. It took Heaven, Hell, and a communist unicorn working together to put him down.
• Creepy Twins: The Black Twins, though they're more evil than outright creepy, but it still applies.
• Damage-Proof Vehicle:
  • The Monstrosity airframe has survived being crashed into stuff, gone through a forest fire and been left underwater long enough for the Crusaders to figure out how to fish it out.
  • Tin Mare's helicopter form continues this tradition of surviving everything quite well. So far the only thing to even damage it is being a few yards from ground zero of Kinetic bombardment.
• Deal with the Devil:
  • Non-soul selling type. Braeburn makes up a villain as part of a plan to get Tin Mare to let him remove her personality locks. He gets Sir Win's help. Sir Win Lampshades this.
  • Valiant came Back from the Dead by making a deal with the most believed in diety he could find: Santa Claus.
• Deface of the Moon: In The Adventures of Trixie, R63 Valiant won a bet with Luna and she was forced to write "Valiant Rules" on the moon. Back in the main universe, regular Valiant has his moon base and there was a major battle on the moon.
  • And now in the regular universe they've fired a nuke at said base.
• Disproportionate Retribution: Valiant didn't like Svengallop, so he had Cordoba castrate him. Honestly, Valiant over-doing things is pretty standard.
• The Driver: Tin Mare, given she's both the driver and the vehicle at the same time.
• The Engineer: Valiant, even going to borrow a speech from THE Engineer.
• Even Evil Has Standards.
  • When Trixie, Sunset, Cordoba, and Daring are surrounded by Harry Potter cosplayers, Trixie suggests shooting their way out. Cordoba points out that mass-murder of a bunch of unarmed kids would just make them seem like assholes. Instead they trash and loot the place!
  • The Council of Valiants had this opinion about the time Valiant's plan involved killing a baby (even if it was possessed) in front of the mother.
• Everybody Wants the Hermaphrodite: Averted. No one wants to be around Colombia and her massive package.
• First-Person Smartass: Valiant will occasionally add in little comments about the Mane 6 into his narration. He still tells the full story, averting Unreliable Narrator, but he will make his opinion about what's going on crystal clear.
• Fun with Acronyms:
  • Lightweight Interceptor for Badass Bombing.
  • SNow Utility Track
  • Cargo Helicopter Of Pony Assembly
  • Comitte Responsible for ElEcting the President
  • Ponyville Industrial Nuclear Powerplant. Paid for using the Big Bag O Bribe Bits.
• Functional Genre Savvy: Valiant is smart enough to know what's going on. Doesn't mean he won't play into a trope any way if he thinks it'll be funny.
• Gatling Good: One of Valiant's favorite forms of armament. He's at least put them on his VTOL and on Tin Mare,
• Good is Not Nice: Valiant and–eventually–everyone else in his squad. Just because you fight bad guys doesn't mean you're going to offer them tea and cookies.
• Graffiti of the Resistance: Ponies have been writing "Valiant did nothing wrong" for awhile, even before the actual resistance started.
• Gunship Rescue: Has happened a few times over the series, usually with the Cutie Mark Crusaders as the pilots.
• Hammerspace: Exploited by Valiant to hold all his gear.
• Happiness in Slavery:
  • Tin Mare is perfectly ok with not being truly sentient, and only doing as ordered. Though this is because Valiant programmed her that way. Much to Braeburn's frustration as he tries to convince her to let him remove those locks.
  • Colombia was perfectly happy to fulfill her role of starting a presidential debate for Valiant, then blowing her brains out when her task was accomplished. Like above, this is because she was programmed to be happy with this state of affairs.
  • At some point in the story Daisy, Roseluck, and Lily decided to become Fluttershy's slaves. She's too timid to make them leave.
• Humongous Mecha: Valiant's favorite thing to build.
• I Am a Humanitarian: Valiant, Applejack, and a mountain guide got stuck up near the Crystal Empire during a snowstorm. Food ran low and they drew straws to see who lived. The guide lost. On the plus side, now AJ can form meat clones of herself for backup in a fight.
• Insufferable Genius: At least Twilight seems to think this about Valiant. He's right and that's the worst part!
• Jerkass Has a Point: Valiant being the Jerkass in question. Other characters may not enjoy it, but they can't ignore the truth.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Despite his own claims and what you'd assume from reading this page, Valiant does care for his friends and tries to protect Equestria. He's just not too concerned over things like collateral damage.
• Kangaroo Court: Maud's "trial" for murder. The entire trial consists of the group running to the town hall to escape an angry mob^note Who are also after Maud for murder, and Maud immediately being found guilty.
• Kick The Son Of A Bitch: A time honored tradition of this story is having the Jerkass background characters of an episode meet horrible fates by Valiant or his family. Highlights include Sunset killing the puppet guy from Inspiration Manifestation, Svengallop getting castrated, and Cordoba decapitating the gold-toothed pony from Gift Of The Maud Pie.
• Kill Sat: At some point Valiant launched several satelittes containing large tungsten carbide rods, better known as Rods From God.
• King Incognito: Cracker/Celestia and Cheese/Luna.
• Last-Name Basis: Valiant. He hasn't been called Plymouth since he came up with the name.
• La Résistance: There's a group of pro-Valiant ponies running around trying to be this. So far things haven't been going well for them.
  • Also Wind Rider's Wonderbolts. And presumably more as it was stated Valiant's death created a large power-vacuum in Equestria.
• Left It In: During a long list of ponies, the author accidentally listed Coloratura twice. Instead of fixing it, a second Coloratura was added to the story.
• Long Game:
  • Played by Valiant throughout the course of the story. Whether it be pranks, murder, or espionage, Valiant is willing to take his time.
  • The author is also a fan of the this.
• Lost Technology: Inevitable as Valiant never shared plans for anything with anyone and his reputation means many ponies tend to regard his stuff as "Touch it and something horrible will happen."
• Malaproper: Ponies don't always get human expressions quite right, and Valiant doesn't care if he messes them up.
  Valiant: But we'll burn that bridge when we get to it.
  Twilight: Don't you mean cross that bridge when we get to it?
  Valiant: Do I?
• Mexican Standoff: In the episode Newbie Dash, Cordoba pulls her sword on some thugs. They pull out guns. Trixie pulls out an M60.
• The Multiverse: Turns out there are a lot more versions of Equestria out there. A lot of the alternate versions of Valiant from those universes founded the Council of Valiants
• News Parody: Cordoba's roadtrip/rampage across Earth and her encounters with various celebrities are covered by TMZ.
• Noodle Incident: We never see exactly what happened in this story's version of My Little Pony: Equestria Girls, but it left Sunset Shimmer broken for half of season 4.
• Not-So-Omniscient Council of Bickering: The Council of Valiants. While they may not be constantly arguing, the fact that everyone there is Plymouth Valiant means that they're very unlikely to help.
• Nuclear Weapons Taboo: Averted due to Equestria having no real concept of WMDs. A nuclear bomb and a shipping container full of bacon were launched at the moon, creating an artificial alicorn political candidate.
• Our Demons Are Different: Sir Win is a demon who seems more interested in running his store than normal demon things. Though he does have a strong dislike for Bible, a pony literally made from the good book itself.
• Our Presidents Are Different: Because the only candidate is a red white and blue alicorn with an American-sized manhood and is trying to get elected President in a monarchy. And when faced with the threat of President Valiant, Celestia closed the loophole allowing ponies to run for the position in the first place
• Our Vampires Are Different: In this world killing the one who turned you into a vampire turns you back to normal. Sadly, if they bite you then turn back to normal you're pretty much screwed.
• Overly Prepared Gag: Refer to the Forrest Gump joke in the Comedic Sociopathy entry. There was around three months of setup for that. Also the hella-copter pun below, which was being set up nearly half a year. Totallynotabrony loves the Long Game.
• Paper-Thin Disguise: Apparently putting on sunglasses makes you absolutely invisible.
• Promotion to Parent:
  • Happened to Valiant and Sunset with Cordoba. Also Guinness and Rainbow Dash, twice.
  • Valiant was also semi-promoted when Trixie was turned into a kid.
• Quirky Town: Ponyville. Current residents include: a demon, a guy literally made from a Bible, someone who can turn into a dragon at will, someone who can turn into a Draconeques at will, someone who can make meat clones of herself, a couple of people from another world, and that's not even getting into the stuff that was already weird in canon. It's telling that Twilight being an alicorn is on the low-end of unusual around here.
• Reset Button: Valiant hits it to clean up the mess from Gabby murdering most of Equestria. What has and hasn't changed is still unknown.
• Robotic Reveal: Cordoba is a robot
• Robot Me: Twilight/Twi-minator
• Rude Hero, Nice Sidekick: Valiant and his family are all horrible people, while the Mane 6 (mainly Twilight) have kept their personalities mostly intact from the show.
• Running Gag: Several, including referencing the six mares that are still chained up in the basement.
• Scare 'Em Straight: When the CMC decided to be missionaries the first words of their first sermon were, "You're all going to Hell unless you do exactly what we say!" Honestly though, that was the only coherent part of the sermon anyway.
• Schizo Tech: Inevitable as Valiant never gave his inventions to pre-industrial Equestria. The Royal Guards are armed with spears and bows. Valiant has a Desert Eagle and Trixie has her M60, the whole team flies around in a VTOL, and the Crusaders have piloted a few Humongous Mecha in their day.
• Self-Insert Fic: How the series got its start. Subverted in that somewhere along the line, Valiant became a character unto himself.
• Shout-Out:
  • When asked about his robots, Valiant borrows the monolouge from The Engineer.
  • There was briefly a robot named Twi-Minator running around.
  • Valiant refers to Sunburst and Thorax as the ambiguously gay duo.
  • The proposed names for Valiant's submarine school included Das Boot and Booty McBootface
• Sliding Scale of Robot Intelligence: Tin Mare rates around 3, being very similar to a normal pony, if said pony spoke in Machine Monotone, could be uploaded into a hella-copter and was equipped with lots of guns.
• Space Base: Valiant set one up on the moon.
• Strapped to an Operating Table: Braeburn when he was first turned into a cyborg.
  Valiant: Wow, for God's sake Braeburn, Princess Peach is harder to kidnap than you.
• Switching P.O.V.:
  • Sunset took up the narration job for the first half of season 5.
  • There was also the time during Keep Calm and Flutter On that multiple characters commented on Valiant's homicidal rage against Discord using the recorder the entire story is apparently told through.
• Take Our Word for It: When trying to describe Rainbow and Guinness's breakup, the best Valiant can do is call it glorious and invoke this.
• Took a Level in Badass: Valiant and company. They always walk away from a major crisis more powerful than before.
• Torches and Pitchforks: Played with. At first, the mob coming after Maud is just a regular angry one. It's only after the group hides at Rarity's house that they start lighting torches.
• Truly Single Parent: Cordoba is a robot built by Valiant who identifies as his daughter.
• The Unapologetic: The entire Valiant family. Not a one of them is sorry for anything they've done. In fact, most of them are proud of it.
• Unrobotic Reveal: Turns out Tin Mare was once a pony named Merry May. Valiant turned her into an advanced Artificial Intelligence using the power of Wetware CPU.
• Unstoppable Mailman: Derpy's refusal to abandon her job almost let the changelings take over Canterlot. A much more villainous example would be Post Haste, who nearly took over Equestria.
• Unsympathetic Comedy Protagonist: As stated repeatedly, Valiant is a jerk, and his family isn't much better. The main reason we continue to root for them is just how awesome everything they touch becomes.
• Unwilling Roboticisation:
  • Valiant wanted to try to make a cyborg and Braeburn was already missing several limbs. Unfortunately for Braeburn, his opinions on the surgery were ignored.
  • Quibble Pants tried to turn Coloratura into a cyborg in her sleep.
• Weirdness Censor: None of the residents of the royal palace^note  not even Luna questioned it when Celestia randomly left and put Sunset in charge of the government. Even when Sunset left and put Maud in charge, no one noticed. According to Valiant, this is because they would rather believe that Celestia changed her appearance for no reason than believe she left and now someone else is running the government.

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