United Earth
Ah, that's... not the type of metal that I had in mind. Usually I think of Power Metal of Progressive Metal. Death Metal tends to leave me cold.
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
I just finished going over your chapter fragment, Handle.
edited 23rd Nov '14 7:07:30 AM by CDRW
United Earth
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
Thank you very much for your kind words.
One problem I have is that, while I find myself annoyed by excessively verbose and filler-ish stories (I gave up on Night's Favoured Child, although I think it'd make a terrific children's book), I myself have a lot of trouble getting any serious wordcount under my belt.
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
Streamer
*Obligatory "It's not about how big your word count is, it's how you use it."*
FE: Genealogy Story Run 7PM PT Sun, Mon, Fri; Expert Unicorn Overlord 7PM PT Wed, Thurs: http://www.twitch.tv/kuroitsubasatenshi
Bully in the Alley
"My word count is bigger than yours."
"The only way to truly waste an idea is to shove it where it doesn't belong."
United Earth
There's a Count Count, but there's no Word Count. Or Vord Count, for that matter.
Ich bin nicht schuld! 's ist Gottes Plan!
I don't know how you feel about editing already-published material, but I had a look at the Gdoc anyway. I'm about halfway through now; I'll do the rest tomorrow. At first I was planning to only comment on a few minor points, but I got more and more nitpicky as I went.
Most of my comments concern sentence-level or paragraph-level issues (grammar, style, that stuff). I noticed one big plot hole, though: if Luna never told anyone about her clever evacuation plans, she must have been carrying an SSCS6000-calibre Idiot Ball. See my comment on that passage for clarification.
If I ever finish AoH, I want to write that story with Loads and Loads of Characters set in feudal Equestria
which I came up with forever ago. Its Count Count will be through the roof.
edited 23rd Nov '14 2:25:34 PM by MidnightRambler
Mache dich, mein Herze, rein...
Had an idea this morning: Princess Twilight Sparkle as Equestria's diplomat. The idea was equestria and all the locations in the show (not counting Canterlot High) are an island nation (the Saddle Arabians are an autonomous territory that are slowly getting used to the idea of being part of a larger nation), and now that TS has proven her princess cred, Princess Celestia has commissioned her to conduct friendship on a global scale, to wit, international diplomacy. Her first order of business, to go to this little country called Arendelle and attend it's queen's coronation as a prelude to strengthening diplomatic and trade ties...
Yeah, it's a crossover. I'm basically taking a bunch of shows, stealing their governments, and sticking them all in the same planet. Opinions? Suggestions? Complete and utter apathy?
edited 23rd Nov '14 2:59:53 PM by SCMof2814
Bully in the Alley
You had me until the crossover part. The friendship = diplomacy idea is an interesting one, and it actually fits into the show way better than all the backstab dickery that most authors portray Equestrian politics/nobility as.
"The only way to truly waste an idea is to shove it where it doesn't belong."
Existence Weighed Against Nonbeing
Depends if you expect people to take it seriously, or if you're just doing it for lulz. If it's the latter, it could work pretty well.
Reaction Image Repository
Taking it seriously... I don't know yet. This is me, after all. I wrote Tales of Fluttershy's Harem. As to the crossover part, well, I find it easier to take established fictional governments than to try and make my own and end up with them being kinda flat.
@ Midnight: I don't mind at all. I always have to do some editing after I publish anyway. I'm glad you caught that plothole. I'm going to have to think about how to fix it while changing as little as possible.
United Earth
So, I'm at the part of my first chapter where Zecora narrates how she came to know Fluttershy and become her Special Someone. [warning, there's a segment in white text in the middle that's NSFW, I made it white so that you don't read it by accident].
As I walked back the question on my mind was “How to get the ingredients I need to brew this newest poultice I’ve designed...” I only thought of them as tools to get the parts required in my experiments; ‘Hello’, ‘how much’, ‘here’s that’, ‘goodbye’, and done.
I was quite fine alone and did not need a friend or love or anything like that; superfluous distracting wastes of time. I’ve left my home to study herbs and beasts that are unknown in my savanna home; to find the cures to ailments left behind, to soothe the passions of body and mind, to clear the humours and to calm the heart.
I’m on a mission, with a duty to my land and tribe, I thought, I have no time for foreign games and it would take so long to learn their strange quaint customs, weird conventions, strange reactions, rustic fashions, sense of humour…
But then the unexpected happened and a curious little filly followed me back home without me noticing at all! The stealthy little thing had braved the dark and boding Everfree to talk to me!
Oh, Sun and Moon, this could be troublesome!
“Listen to me, little filly, won’t you be missed home? Should I take you back? It’s dark outside and I fear in the gloom you might just take a wrong turn to your doom!”
“Hi, I’m Applebloom!” she said, so sweet, “Is it true you do some evil dances, or gobble people up in tasty stews?”
“No.” I said, quite flatly.
“And if one looks deep in your eyes, they ain’t entranced or hypnotized?”
“It’s not my place to Mesmare-ize without consent.”
“I knew they were wrong about you!”
At least this filly took me at my word.
What gossip had these ponies been inventing?
Unfortunately it meant some “laughs” were on the way; I warned them ‘bout the Poison Joke. but in mistrust they probably won’t heed my counsel - though, in retrospect, it could have been a little clearer. At any rate I thought I’d wait a little more for them to come to me; hopefully it would not be too hard to heal the ‘gift’ of prankster plants.
Eventually I got to know them all, the Twi, the Shy, the Dash, the Pie, the Jack, the Rare, the Spike, the Belle, the Bloom, the Scoot - (you thought I’d say ‘the Loo’, or didn’t you?).
Of all the ponies I had met so far, there was just one that slowly caught my heart. A fellow hermit in her cottage shies; though brave as bear, this lion-hearted mare removes herself from all the peers that press and all the mares that judge, the colts that gauge, the folk that grade, the herd that calculates - status, standing, station, place and race.
Instead she steps aside, and self-effaced, lives out her life to care and love and heal, the broken beasts and sickly things the wild would trample underfoot and tear apart. She will fear neither beak nor fang nor claw… as long as there’s no judgment in their eyes? What makes her fear her fellow sapients so, the meek and timid ponies above all?
We met again for we were closest neighbours, fellow healers - and also fellow loners. At first we simply were alone together, but soon we found ourselves togeth’r alone. And day by day I pried her tale from her, one jigsaw puzzle fragment at a time..
A tale of unfulfilled expectations, a failure to exemplify her role that parents, friends and masters laid upon her.
Okay, so:
- the gryphon is an inept predator because he can't kill while looking sentient prey in the eye.
- Zecora's a reculse-researcher much like Twilight used to be, who came to Everfree to do some research on the crazy wildlife there. She's not telling the whole story, but I haven't figured out the emotional twist there.
- Fluttershy, we know her backstory and how she discovered her talent with animals, but we don't know why she's so shy and anti-social. I'm assuming it has to do with performance anxiety and societal pressures, but I need to come up with a detailed, juicy story to connect to the other two exiles. Any help on that? What does the fanon say?
Ich bin nicht schuld! 's ist Gottes Plan!
@SC Mof: I'm with Clever. The premise is interesting, but the "crossover" part seems like a bad idea. Just dropping Twilight into a bunch of other 'verses sounds like a recipe for a very cheap comedy and not much more. Besides, half the fun of "diplomacy in Equestria" is in gryphon/zebra/minotaur/etc. worldbuilding 
Also, "friendship on a global scale" is a pretty rose-tinted description of international diplomacy. There tends to be a lot of intimidation, bribery and ego-jockeying involved. Of course, you could take the view that in your setting, diplomacy is all sunshine and rainbows, but that would make it pretty hard to generate interesting conflict.
Mache dich, mein Herze, rein...
@ Midnight: I just made some changes to those paragraphs to try and address that issue. I haven't smoothed the seam between it and the following stuff, but I was hoping that you could take a look and see if it addresses your concern.
United Earth
I don't think so. Friendship is complicated and conflictive even at the best of times. Heck, this show thrives on that. Even when countries have the best intentions towards each other, things can get very tense.
edited 23rd Nov '14 3:57:19 PM by TheHandle
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
Ich bin nicht schuld! 's ist Gottes Plan!
Sure, I'll have a look at it tomorrow.
Anyway, congratulations on instantly rocketing to the top of the Popular box 
I feel compelled to point out there's a typo ("recieved") and a comma splice (between "the news" and "the changelings") in your short description, though. It's unbecoming of a writer of your stature.
@Midnight: I'm playing to my strengths. I'm better at crossover than world building, and on balance feel I can write a better story this way. Still, it all comes down to execution. Let me just finish this Pony/Nanoha first contact idea and then I'll get to this one.
Ghosts N' Stuff Remix
Look, don't badger people into writing their story differently from how they want to do it. If you want to write a story with a similar premise that focuses more on worldbuilding, do it! You're the authors.
"Monsters are tragic beings. They are born too tall, too strong, too heavy. They are not evil by choice. That is their tragedy."
insert title here
so I had an idea for a fun crossover fic with Courage The Cowardly Dog. Twilight accidentally teleports herself to Nowhere, right into the middle of Muriel's house, of course. She's too magically drained to cast anything, including a teleport back home, and needs to time to recover. But the government/military guys show up, surround the house, and try to kidnap Twilight so they can do experiments on the strange freaky alien unicorn thing.
Now Courage has to help keep Twilight safe long enough for her to regain enough power to teleport home!
and of course something terrible will happen to Eustace at some point.
XP granted for befriending a giant magical spider!
Bully in the Alley
SC Mof asked for suggestions and opinions, and they got them. None of the responses struck me as "badgering".
@Midnight: As I noted in my previous post, equating democracy with friendship is actually an idea I would support because it is just idealistic enough to fit into the setting well. The show has all sorts of moments that should come off as corny and naive but it sells it regardless.
I think a No Antagonist / slice of life story about Twilight being a politician and dealing with extremely mundane matters would be a pleasant counterpoint to the endless stream of fics stuffed with government conspiracies and Lawful Evil bureaucrats. Of course, it would run the risk of being disingenuous compared to real politics, but it wouldn't clash with the setting.
"The only way to truly waste an idea is to shove it where it doesn't belong."
Existence Weighed Against Nonbeing
@Midnight: As the thread's numerous derails on similar topics have shown, I don't think it would be that much of a stretch to say that diplomacy in the world of the show isn't nearly as cutthroat as it is in reality. I'd think that it would consist mainly of stuff like trying to avert the type of conflicts that arose in "Over A Barrel". Basically trying to make sure that international relations stay cordial. As was pointed out, there's plenty of room for conflict even when parties aren't trying to screw each other over.
Also this. There's a real glut of fics that feature politics as being every bit as treacherous as in real life, so there would definitely be a niche for a story where the types of politics shown in the show are taken at face value and the nations get along for the most part and diplomats are primarily there to keep it that way.
edited 23rd Nov '14 4:51:57 PM by JapaneseTeeth
Reaction Image Repository
I did ask, and I thank you for the response. I too think that a No Antagonist slice-of-life story would be good, but am going the way I am because I felt Twilight's diplomacy had to be tried in a more foreign setting.
But anyway, this is an idea separate from that one. I've been wanting to do this crossover as a genuine first contact fic, and was inspired by Twilight Makes First Contact at the problems of communication and such. And then came the punchline at the end...
A MLP/Nanoha First Contact crossover:
It all started, as these things do, when someone lost some Lost Logia that caused it to end up on some random, out of the way, non-Administered world. This, of course, forced professor Yuuno Scrya to curse his luck and apply for special permission to visit the world to retrive the artifact, and incidentally find a new courier service, that that DIDN'T keep losing his precious, ancient artifacts on strange planets.
He would normally have had to wait to get the paper work pushed thorough and then, when permission was granted, resign himself to trying to sneak onto the planet and get the Lost Logia back without any of the residents noticing. His friends (and Chrono) in the Bureau, however, who actually looked at the report felt that the TSAB should send in a first contact team.
"Why?" Yuuno asked, confused. "It's just a Lost Logia. I mean, the only reason they even sent a ship to Earth at all that time was because there was more than one."
Hayate gave him a bland look. "Yuuno, this planet has a sun orbiting it."
Yuuno frowned. "What does that have to do with anything?"
"It's usually the other way around," Hayate said.
"Well, how would I know? I'm an archaeologist, not a astronomer!"
Dear Princess Celestia,
Aliens have invaded Ponyville. They have landed in the Everfree and are commencing some sort of mining operation as their other forces march on Ponyville. Please Advise. No longer have option of blasting with Elements of Harmony.
Signed, Your Faithful Student, Twilight Sparkle
PS. Seriously. Aliens. Please send help.
As first contacts go, it was a bit... messy. The ponies, feeling threatened and a bit panicked upon realizing the Elements of Harmony were no longer around to conveniently nuke threats to either existence, fired the first shot, a fact that horrified Twilight Sparkle, and she desperately did all she could to mitigate the damage.
The TSAB, for their part, wonder why the heck pies and cupcakes were being thrown at them.
"Okay, I think they thought we were just kidding around," Twilight Sparkle said, relieved. "But just to be safe, someone tell the Cakes not to back any more artillery grades pastries."
Spike sighed. "I'm really missing the Elements of Harmony right now. i don't know if you noticed, but everyone you blasted with it eventually became a friend. Even Discord... eventually. Kinda."
Twilight Sparkle allowed herself a small smile. "Yeah, well, I doubt these aliens will understand we consider gigantic blasts of brightly colored magic to be a prelude to making friends."
"No," Hayate said, staring at her subordinates. "Look, I don't care what rumor says, Captain Takamachi's Starlight Breaker isn't some kind of friendship-making ray. And I doubt the locals would consider gigantic blasts of brightly colored magic to be a prelude to making friends."
Circumstance having cruelly curtailed the use of gigantic blasts of brightly colored magic as a means of communicating friendly desires, more boring methods had to be used. Math was first, of course.
A month later, after having gone through untold sleepless nights and enough coffee, tea and sugar to build a castle, both sides' pain and suffering at attempting to communicate by constructing a Lincos artificial language was cruelly made irrelevant when it was discovered that Caro, Captain Testarossa-Harlaown's ward/sister, had been happily chatting with Spike, Princess Twilight Sparkle's assistant, in fluent dragon for the last three days.
edited 23rd Nov '14 5:05:39 PM by SCMof2814
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]")
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]")
Jericho
Mache dich, mein Herze, rein...