Fanfic / Divine Jealousy and The Voice of Reason

A My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic fanfic by Jordan179 set in late Season 4 (November YOH 1504) between "Equestria Games" and "Twilight's Kingdom Part 1".

When Discord discovers that Fluttershy and Bulk Biceps are lovers, his first inclination is to resolve matters the traditional way. But perhaps this would be unwise? So instead he decides to consult a part of himself with whom he rarely speaks: his Voice of Reason.

Hopefully she's not too mad about that whole destroying her home and killing her and her people business ... that was all so very long ago...

May be found here.

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Tropes in this story include

• Affectionate Nickname: Luna tends to call Twilight "mine own dearest friend," a way for her to express her love for her short of actually stating that she loves her. Discord's flashback makes it obvious that this is exactly the same term she used for Dissy, when they were in a similar situation over 2500 years ago.
• Ancient Grome: The Old Crystal Empire is in many ways a Fantasy Counterpart Culture of both Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome. Like Ancient Greece, it is a center of scholarship and science; like Ancient Rome it is a unified empire defended by highly-professional legions. This creates obvious analogies with the Byzantine Empire, which as we know from Corruption at Nightfall it will resemble in a millennium and a half, when Prince Crimson Quartz is born.
• Badass Bookworm: Several examples.
  • In her life incarnate, Wind Whistler loved books and knowledge — and was the deadliest fighter among the Paradise Estate Ponies. Now, Wind Whistler conceptualizes her domain within Discord's mind as a vast library, in which she has access to all the knowledge Discord has accumulated over aeons of existence and is too lazy himself to bother remembering.
  • The backstory of the Crystal Empire shows that this was a whole civilization of them. According to Luna:
    In what was then the fertile southern reach, on the north shore of the Great Lake, stood the Crystal City, that very same one that last year thee didst help free from its tyrant. Founded by university scholars who fled the Cataclysm, it preserved a treasure of ancient books, containing lore from the Age of Wonders.
• Badass Family: The three eldest of the Pie Sisters, whose numbers include Maud Pie, Claire Pie, and Pinkie Pie. Even the "normal" members of the family are strong and fast, owing to the demands of rock farming; save for Goldie "Granny" Pie, who doesn't need to be physically strong.
• Being Evil Sucks: The main lesson Discord learned from a millennium of global domination, gained at the price of losing every one of his childhood friends. The desire to avoid repeating his past mistakes is the main reason Discord decides not to kill Bulk Biceps.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: When Rainbow Dash has her boastful Imagine Spot, Applejack asks her "Does that little play come with musical accompaniment?" Pinkie Pie breaks into the conversation and says "This tune!" pointing to a hyperlink in the text.
• Brilliant, but Lazy: Discord. He has a fine mind that he doesn't bother to use. So Wind Whistler is using it for him.
• Childhood Friends: Two sets in-story.
  • Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash have been best friends since Flight Camp.
  • Discord was the best friend of Celestia and Luna as all three grew up together at Paradise Estate.
• Childhood Friend Romance: Involving the two sets of Childhood Friends.
  • Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash. This has ended between them, because Fluttershy has chosen Bulk Biceps. Rainbow Dash is unhappy about this, but is willing to abide by Fluttershy's choice and remain her most loyal friend.
  • Celestia and Discord. This was ended by Discord's Awakening and Face–Heel Turn. Discord now regrets this, but Celestia cannot forgive him for the immense suffering he has caused.
• Coming of Age Story: The flashback chapters describe how Celestia, Luna and Discord grew up together at Paradise Estate.
• Crazy Jealous Guy: Discord, regarding Fluttershy. Remember, he's not Fluttershy's lover, he's never told her he wants to be, and yet he considers her to "belong" to him.
• Demonic Possession: How Discord wound up seizing Wind Whistler's body and making it his own.
• Doomed Hometown: The adventures of Celestia and Luna began when Discord destroyed Paradise Estate and cast them — and the survivors of the G1 Ponies — out into the world.
• End of an Age: Discord's Awakening destroyed Paradise Estate and resulted in massive upheavals all across the Earth, putting an end to the world in which the trio of Immortal Avatars (Celestia, Luna and Discord) had grown to young adulthood.
• Enemy Within: Discord, from Dissy's Point of View.
• Face–Monster Turn: What happened to Discord when he Awakened.
• Fighting from the Inside: Two major examples.
  • An unusual variation. Wind Whistler has long since given up openly fighting Discord in their shared mind, and instead is adopting a strategy of what could be called long-term subversion and co-option, with occasional acts of misdirection and outright sabotage. She's gaining ground, too!
  • There are hints that Discord's original Incarnate personality, the caring and gentle "Dissy", whom both Celestia and Luna loved, may be resurfacing.
• For the Love of Many: Claire Pie is married to five Byakhee. This sort of polyandrous marriage is normal for Byakhee. Claire, who has a strong sexual moral code forbidding pre-marital and extra-marital sex, is not complaining ... all the presumed sex here is quite properly marital. From the point of view of the Byakhee, they're getting a good deal — Claire is a semi-divine being, and Byakhee marriages normally have a 12:1 male to female ratio.
• Global Warming: In The Witch of Winter, Klaus returns to Earth after a long absence and notes that the winter air feels warmer than usual. It's also what allowed her to return to the world, the melting ice caps freeing her.: A century after the Cataclysm, the Earth's climate stablizes at a Thermal Maximum — a condition last seen in the Paleocene-Eocene transition around 55 million years ago. Most of the Earth is jungle, desert or swamp; the ice caps have melted and the sea level has risen 300 feet over that of the Age of Wonders, and the high civilization of the Crystal Empire and the semi-barbaric Three Tribes all dwell in what was once Caneighda, with the Tribes located in a temperate zone on what in our world would be called Hudson's Bay, and the Crystal City rising on the northern shores of the Great Lakes, in a fertile semi-tropical land. In Luna's description
  The climate was different then, the Earth much hotter, in what geologists call a Thermal Maximum. Where we are now was a steaming jungle; and away from the rivers barren deserts. The habitable regions were all in the northlands, especially around the Arctic Ocean, which was then free of ice.
• Go Back to the Source: Discord does this four times in the course of the tale.
  • First, he goes to his own pocket dimension, which he has formed into a duplicate of his original home in this incarnation, Paradise Estate.
  • Secondly, he ventures into his own mind and talks with Wind Whistler, his old mentor and the original inhabitant of his current physical form.
  • Thirdly, he travels to the mound which used to be the actual Paradise Estate, where he contemplates his past there and decides what to do about his future.
  • Finally, he returns to Ponyville to once again confront Fluttershy and discuss what has happened (for Discord values of "discuss," that is).
• The Good King: Emperor Golden Mark, a clear Expy of Emperor Marcus Aurelius, rules the Crystal Empire during Lulu and Dissy's Visit To The Library.
  The Empire was then under the rule of Golden Mark, the greatest of its Imperators, who governed justly and wisely with the aid of his Great Council. He and the Good Imperators who had preceded him had brought law and science and a better way of life to every corner of their realm; and were in the process of restoring the rule of the Council which had preceded them and been shattered in the stress of the Coming of the Ice and the Wanderings of the Tribes, three and a half centuries ago. The people were prosperous and happy, and Harmony reigned — even two children like us could see it as we walked the streets of the Crystal City, marveling at the multitudes.
• Great Big Library of Everything: Several.
  • Wind Whistler's library at Paradise Estate holds a tremendous quantity of information, including copies of books from Human Earth and a wealth of knowledge about the world before The Cataclysm.
  • The Crystal Empire has the Great Imperial Library of the Crystal City, which has a collection even bigger than Wind Whistler's, including much pre-Cataclysmic lore, though not as much from Human Earth.
  • The Unicorns of the Heartspire are said to have a wealth of magical lore unavailable elsewhere, but do not share their secrets freely.
  • The Celestial Dragons of Chi-Neigh have a library containing knowledge from before even the Age of Extermination — including The Seven Cryptical Books of Hsoof, which holds the secret of the true identities of Celly, Lulu and Dissy.
  • After she is possessed and consumed by Discord, Wind Whistler gains access to Discord's own memories, which she perceives as a vast library containing many of the deep secrets of the Universe.
• Green-Eyed Monster: Jealousy is the main point of this story. There are three examples shown.
  • Luna was jealous of Discord's love for Celestia, rather than herself, leading her to make a critical mistake that resulted in Paradise Estate losing its best chance to stop Discord before he brought about the End of an Age.
  • Rainbow Dash is jealous of Fluttershy's love for Bulk Biceps, but is not letting it destroy her friendship with Fluttershy.
  • Discord is jealous of Fluttershy's love for Bulk Biceps as well — and this jealousy is what precipitates the whole plot.
• Grim Up North: The northern frontier of the Old Empire was a frigid wasteland menaced by Snow Griffons, Ice Orcs, Windigoes and the Frost Giants. The Imperials who lived up there were a hardy lot:
  There were many Crystal Ponies from elsewhere in the Empire, visiting their capital. The tough-as-nails Bay-Ponies of the far north, shaggy and silent. They were the ones who had stayed and survived the Coming of the Ice, they had heard the Windigoes howl and seen the great shapes of the Frost Giants moving on their northern horizons. On another journey I would see Iceguard, their great city-fort. They seemed out of place in the gay beauty of the Crystal City, and moved warily, as if they feared the Ice-Orcs or Snow-Griffons would attack at any moment. They bore ice-axes and picks strapped to their backs, and though peace-bonded looked as if they expected to have to use them.
• Hollywood New England: The Imperials of the Morgan Coast ^note (A "Morgan Horse" is a breed of horse native to New England), both in the time of the Old Empire and Modern Equestria:
  There were Ponies from the Morgan Coast, led by leathery-skinned captains who had traveled up the Laurentian River. These were bold Ponies who dwelt on the Stormy Sea, and diced with their lives against those storms to bring forth fish from the seas. Their inland cousins felled the trees of the great pine forests, risking their own bodies in the dangerous occupation of lumberjacking. So many of them — almost all stallions — died young that the mares sometimes wed two to a stallion, and thus this was called a Morgan-Marriage, and still is today. Things have not changed that much in those trades in Morgan, though now it is Equestrian instead of Imperial, and more and more of the Ponies who live there work in safer occupations, thanks to the coming of this Age of Industry.
• Humans Are Survivors: Luna's opinion of Ponykind — all the more flattering because she was originally something far beyond Ponykind who chose to take Pony form. As she expresses it to Twilght, even reminding Twilight of what she and Celestia (and Twilight!) are really:
  And yet Ponies rose again! That is the most marvelous thing about the species which I have chosen to become. Nothing defeats you for long, If even some of you survive, you will form families, clans, tribes, tribal nations ... you will be moved by the desire to do good to one another, rediscovering compassion, ethics and morality. Only a complete annihilation could stop you — and as long as my Sister and I remember you, even that might not suffice, for we would do our best to recreate you on some new world. For one of the greatest victories of survival Ponykind has won, unawares, was in winning Our admiration and friendship.
• Imagine Spot: Rainbow Dash has one out loud.
  "Then we could go out and try their plan — it'd fail, of course, because we all underestimated Discord, so then we'd all be at his mercy, except me 'cause he knocked me out at the start of the fight, and then — just as he was about to finish all of you off — I'd come rocketing in and give him a Sonic Rainboom to the face — KA-POW! — and save the day!" Her mood gradually improved during her pre-counting of these future glories, until at the end she was beaming in happy anticipation of her intended daring deeds. "Oh, yeah!" she concluded, and high-fived the adoring Scootaloo.
• Insecure Love Interest: Rarity to Spike, she's fully aware of his crush, and the dragon's maturation means that she's less worried about the age factor, he has many of the traits that she finds attractive in a stallion, but she doesn't feel she deserves him.
• Intelligible Unintelligible: Claire "Least Noticeable" Pie speaks in distorted tenor to basso bleats, gasps, snorts, raspberries and half-words. Her immediate family understands her just fine, but most strangers can't.
• Intrepid Merchant: As Lulu and Dissy enter the Crystal City, they see visitors from many lands, a lot of them merchants. The "Sea Pegasi" (pegasi who sail rather than seaponies) of Manehattan are the most classic examples of this trope.
  The Manehattanites even then were jaunty and self-confident, wearing colorful and well-made clothes with a slightly alien cast, since they traded with the Dragons and Griffons and Onagers and Zebras. Yes, this was before there were general pacts with the first two of those races not to prey on Ponies. As I said, the Sea-Pegasi were bold captains, and their ocean-traders sailed with large crews and many weapons on board, ready to trade or to fight as events compelled. I call them Sea-Pegasi, but of course there were also Earth Ponies and Unicorns among their number. What they had in common was that theyr speech was rushed and strangely accented, and they looked at the inhabitants of the Crystal City with a sort of amused contempt, as if they were already the most important city on the continent, though at this time this was far from the truth.
• It's All My Fault: Luna tells Twilight that Discord's Awakening was all her fault, and that Twilight will despise her when she finds out why.
• I Want My Beloved to Be Happy:
  • Rainbow Dash, toward Fluttershy.
  • The attitude Luna now wishes she had taken toward Dissy. It might have saved the whole world a lot of grief had she done so.
• Living Relic: Wind Whistler lived some 3500 years on the Earth as herself, and has survived another 2500 years trapped inside Discord. She has seen Pony civilization rise and fall twice and rise again a third time.
• Love Triangle: Two depicted in-story.
  • Bulk Biceps and Discord both love Fluttershy, who has accepted Bulk as her lover and was previously-unaware of the fact that Discord loved her that way.
  • In the past, Celestia and Luna both loved Discord, but Discord loved only Celestia, seeing Luna as merely one of his best friends.
• Mad Scientist Laboratory: Goldie Pie has one of these, in the barn attached to her farmhouse. What's even better is that as a scholar, scientist and sorceror, she fits all the criteria save amorality.
  So he sat and looked around the laboratory, which was full of all kinds of stuff whose purpose he didn't understand. There was the bank of batteries he'd noticed before, and a lot of wiring. One big table was covered with all sorts of flasks and glass tubes and there were liquids of different colors in some of them. Goldie had told him that she wasn't a mad scientist, and she actually seemed like a pretty nice old lady, but her laboratory sure looked like what one would expect a mad scientist to possess.
• Mage Tower: The Heartspire, far to the southwest, is a mile-high tower Arcology ruled by Unicorn mages of unusually great power, who are served by Earth Ponies. At this time in history, the Heartspire Unicorns are good though secretive; as we know from Cold In Gardez's Lost Cities, their society will become cruel and decadent and the Heartspire become an Evil Tower of Ominousness before the destruction of its top by Princess Celestia. We meet some of its inhabitants as visitors to the Crystal City.
  There was a small party of unicorns, hooded and robed in cottons and silks inscribed in strange sigils, and attended by less-elaborately clad Earth Ponies, who must have come from the fabled Heartspire, far to the southwest on our own continent.
• Magic Map: Wind Whistler has constructed a model of the Multiverse inside part of Discord's own mind.
• Magitek: Very common in Jordan179's world in general, and multiple examples exist in this story.
  • The High Eldren lore that "crafted" the Pony Kinds, and created Paradise Estate is variously referred to as "magic" and "science," and The Moochick as a "scientist" and a "sorceror."
  • In their last decades, the Ponies of the Age of Wonders incorporated magic into their scientific model of the Universe — indeed, this is what led to the disastrous attempt to create the Great Wish which brought about the Cataclysm.
  • The Ponies of Paradise Estate are masters of both ancient science and powerful sorcery.
  • The Crystal Empire was founded by well-armed university faculty and students and the highest ambition of its sages is to learn to build technology in the strange new world after the Cataclsym which will work because it also incorporates sorcerous principles. The strongly-technophilic Luna describes the consequences:
    Their technology was alien to that of the Age of Wonders, they had taken the first steps toward nanotechnological engineering and paradimensional energetics, but still had not regained the use of steam engines — but they had never forgotten the dream, they had set their hooves back on the road to the stars.
• Many Spirits Inside of One: Discord has fallen into the habit of consuming or subsuming his victims. However, this doesn't completely destroy them. He has a whole populace of trapped souls within him now, of which the strongest are Destruction and Wind Whistler.
• Master-Apprentice Chain: Megan taught Wind Whistler how to fight. Wind Whistler taught Luna how to fight. Now Luna is teaching Twilight Sparkle how to fight.
• Mental World: Discord has a particularly complex one inside himself, and it's inhabited by those he's consumed.
• Merchant City: Two mentioned in-story during the flashback to the years before Discord.
  • The Crystal City is, in addition to being the capital of the Crystal Empire, the hub for overland and river trade in central northern North Amareica. When Luna and Dissy visit the city, they see merchants from all over the continent, and from lands beyond.
  • The Republic of Manehattan is a classic merchant-dominated City State whose seafarers trade all over the world, and whose merchant princes feel superior to even the Crystal Ponies.
• A Million Is a Statistic: Luna lampshades this to Twilight in an attempt to avert this and make real the utter horror of the Cataclysm to Twilight by pointing out the horrible fate of many individuals.
  There had been eight billion Ponies alive on Earth when the day of Cataclysm dawned. There were eight hundred million when Night cast its kindly veil over the ruins of what had been a great global civilization. A year later, scarce eighty million survived. Put simply, but one in a hundred Ponies had lived.
  
  These numbers, mine own dear friend, are easy to speak. Numbers are simple and clean. Numbers are not vaporized too quickly to understand what is happening; or badly burned but left to perish in unspeakable anguish over a few remaining hours of life; or crippled and forced into an unequal struggle for survival in a newly hostile world, untreated wounds bringing pain at every step in their last days or weeks of existence. Numbers do not weep over dead husbands or foals; numbers do not wander uncomprehendingly through the ruins of what had been their world; numbers are not forced to do dreadful things to survive. Numbers are not cast down from the heights of easy lives in an advanced technological civilization to labor unceasingly to live in a world turned into an Iron Age hell.
  
  Numbers do not suffer. Ponies did. Each of those nine-and-ninety in a hundred who died suffered in her own way, and each of those one in a hundred who survived knew the anguish of dead friends and family, wondered why she had been chosen to survive when so many for whom she cared had not been so fortunate. Most were, by the standards of the time in which they had been born, quite mad.
• Murder the Hypotenuse:
  • Discord wants to kill Bulk for "stealing" Fluttershy. It's a good thing that Fluttershy's first reaction is to Stare Discord into being unable to harm him.
  • Subverted with his feelings about Rainbow's relationship with Fluttershy.
• Not Afraid to Die: And Wind Whistler never was. The only reason she now bothers to help keep Discord alive is that she is planning to use him as her weapon against the Night Shadows, to protect Ponykind.
• Oblivious to Love: Twilight Sparkle misses that Fluttershy has fallen for Bulk Biceps and that Pinkie Pie has similarly fallen for Cheese Sandwich. She is aware that Discord has a thing for Fluttershy, and that Princess Luna is attracted to herself, though.
• Psychopathic Manchild: Part of the reason everypony is so frightened of Discord is that he has a history of doing dreadful things to others for playful or trivial reasons.
• Pyrrhic Victory: Discord won two and a half millennia ago, conquered the world ... and found that it was Lonely at the Top, since he had alienated every one of his childhood friends and nopony would truly befriend an Evil Overlord. He spent a thousand years essentially alone with his insane, mind-controlled mother Shady, and even she turned on him at the end.
• Resist the Beast: The reason why Discord sent Surprise away and did not kill most of the Ponies of Paradise Estate; part of him still loved them despite his Face–Monster Turn. Especially, the reason why he did not kill his Aspect's mother Shady. Most notably, the reason why he did not kill Celestia or Luna despite the fact that they actively fought him for a thousand years: he loved them, and especially Celestia, most of all.
• The Runaway: Young filly Luna becomes this after she thinks she has been rejected by the Paradise Estate Ponies as a "monster." Young colt Dissy runs away with her, in part to protect her from the perils of the road.
• Sealed Badass in a Can: Wind Whistler is an incredibly competent fighter and strategist.
• Sealed Good in a Can: Wind Whistler, trapped inside what is now the incarnation of Discord.
• Sealed Evil in a Can: The Cosmic Destruction is also inside of what is now Discord.
• Sealed Inside a Person-Shaped Can: Inverted, as Discord is the 'can' and Wind Whistler among its contents.
• Shining City: The Crystal City, capital of the Crystal Empire. Even more so in ancient times, when it was one of the few great cities in North Amareica, repository of the antediluvian lore of the Age of Wonders.
• Smells Sexy: Spike exudes a mild aphrodisiac called "Dragon Musk" when he is sexually excited. The knowledge that this is why he is exuding it excites Rarity at least as much as the actual aphrodisiac: she views it as a "secret signal" between them that only she can read.
• The Spock: Wind Whistler has always been this — first to Megan, then to generations of Ponies, finally and most ironically to Discord himself.
• Strapped to an Operating Table: Goldie Pie has one of these, and the sight of it terrifies Bulk Biceps before he figures out that he's not going to be horribly abused by her. Her possession of an operating table complete with restraining straps is fully justified by the fact that she is a practicing midwife and her patients (mostly other Earth Ponies) may very well lash out with their hooves in pain — she doesn't want to get badly injured by a stray kick.
• Tragic Monster: Discord, especially from the point of view of Celestia and Luna, who loved him before his Face–Monster Turn.
• Transformation of the Possessed: What Discord's spirit did to Wind Whistler's body — it turned that body into an exact copy of Discord's original one in this Incarnation.
• Trapped in Villainy: Discord fears that if he really reforms, his own Cosmic Self will reject him and thus when his Aspect eventually dies he will be Killed Off for Real.
• Used to Be a Sweet Kid: Discord, before he Awakened to his Cosmic Self. Extremely sweet and kind, to the point that both Celestia and Luna fell in love with him. The young Discord is almost always referred to as "Dissy" by Celestia and Luna, who do not want to spoil their memories of their beloved best friend by tarring him with Discord's evil deeds.
• What If God Was One of Us?: Dissy, Celestia and Luna are in this position during the years they are growing up at Paradise Estate. Their reactions to their growing power vary: generally speaking, Celestia believes she is destined to rule and lead Ponykind to greatness, Luna that she should fight against evil, and Dissy just wants to support his two best friends — he doesn't realize that he has a darker destiny.
• Where It All Began: In a variant on this trope, Discord returns to Paradise Estate, where he first struck and destroyed his earlier life as Dissy, to decide whether or not he should strike and destroy his new life in Equestria.
• Where I Was Born and Razed: Discord destroyed Paradise Estate, an act that now he regrets most bitterly.

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