Pony Fanfiction Thread

No, Hieracosphinxes have falcon heads.

EQP calls it a sphinx though, and since there are no humans in that world I'm inclined to use that term XD

That is the face of a man who just ate a kitten. Raw.

Yeah sphinx works for me.

@Midnight: In that case you might want to tweak the first stanza a bit; the first stuff that came to mind for me is stuff like Sombra and NMM, which are quite a bit higher on the danger scale than what you were intending to imply.

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Speaking of poetry, I decided to come up with a national anthem of Equestria, based off Gott Erhalte Franz den Kaiser, an Austrian anthem popular during the Napoleonic wars. It's also basis of the German national anthem.

Noble princesses and sovereigns
Of our hallowed, blessed land,
Our voices rise in your honour
For your crown we rise and stand!
Let your jewels of your authority
Shine on every mount and sand,
Noble princesses and our sovereigns
Guide the subjects of your land!

Halper's Law: as the length of an online discussion of minority groups increases, the probability of "SJW" or variations being used = 1.

Welp, finally caught up with Solitary Locust.

That was fricking jarring.

There is no beginning. There is no end. There is only... Hooty.

I couldn't get into Solitary Locust; after two chapters the Torture Porn so heavily outweighed the Plot that I couldn't really care.

I'll concede it is well-written, but good prose can't turn a cavalcade of substance-less Gorn into an actual story.

"The only way to truly waste an idea is to shove it where it doesn't belong."

ahh, so I see my hesitance to actually read that story was well founded.

XP granted for befriending a giant magical spider!

It was really only on my radar because the (since rewritten) entry for it on Dark Fic implied it was ambiguous whether Twi might in fact have been a changeling to begin with.

And this is a heck of a one shot to go through before bed. Sweet dreams.

There is no beginning. There is no end. There is only... Hooty.

Chapter 9 update. Finally got around to it.

For something light for a change, who's seen Higher Flier OR The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance My Little Blackbird? I continued down my Read Later this morning and polished that off.

As one poster put it, "The fic is about a quirky black and red OC who may or may not be faster than Rainbow Dash, yet it's still interesting and good. This is clearly a sign of the end times."

(also I forgot it has the same author as Arrow 18)

Now my list is down to my Big 3 again.

edited 2nd Mar '15 2:23:22 PM by YamiVizziniX

There is no beginning. There is no end. There is only... Hooty.

The author changed the name to just "Higher Flier" a long time ago. The tropes page should probably be updated...

But yeah, Higher Flier was one of the first MLP fics I read (within the first 5, I think), so it holds a special place in my heart.

I wonder why that poster said "may or may not"? She is faster. Like, undoubtedly faster, without even a hint of competition.

edited 2nd Mar '15 4:29:53 PM by Unknownlight

I finished the next section of Inexcusable; new stuff is from the third [hr] to the strikethroughed text (Celestia and Luna's second conversation).

I know that a fair number of people haven't read the story it is a sequel to, but any comments would be appreciated. I think that this is one of my fics that I've had to do the most cutting, reworking, and adjusting to the original plot line. Handle and Yami already said that Celestia came off as kind of "bitchy" in the one part, but writing such a bizarre situation in a naturalistic way has been giving me a lot of trouble.

"The only way to truly waste an idea is to shove it where it doesn't belong."

Writing is coming along well for the Alarm Clock sequel. There's one thing that worries me, though. In "Black Magic Mare", I managed to portray Trixie with at least a modicum of nuance and sympathy. I think in this new story, she's coming across more like a one-dimensional jerk.

Oh well, I can fix that in editing. And Trixie did undergo character development—and not for the better!—in between "Boast Busters" and "Magic Duel", which is when this story is set.

I didn't write any of that.

Yeah, she did have moments where it was clear that she was trying to help Ditzy. Few people are completely consistent all the time, though. I mean, we need look no further than Dash, Applejack and Rarity, who can also get jerky and tunnel-visioned when it comes to competition (or even Twi, when she just wants to get something figured out). Since you plan to place this before Magic Duel, I could see Trixie getting caught up in that (especially since that's practically her specialty to begin with) as a thing that leads up to eventually going for the Alicorn Amulet.

FE: New Mystery Fresh Cart Lunatic 7PM PT Sun, Mon, Fri; Expert Unicorn Overlord 7PM PT Wed, Thurs: http://www.twitch.tv/kuroitsubasatenshi

As long as you make it clear that it's chronologically earlier I think you'll be fine.

In other news, I made some more progress on my next story. Anybody have suggestions about how I can make Rarity's dream seem a bit more surreal?

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Not only is it a bizarre situation, but Celly has a very vaguely-defined personality in canon. Enough so that nearly any reaction could be in-character for Celly, provided you explain the logic behind it.

I didn't write any of that.

True. I think the bigger problem is that what is shown of Celestia's personality is either The Stoic or Tranquil Fury. She never really emotes, which means putting her into an emotional situation adds another layer of complexity to the writing process.

Thanks for the comments. Did you have any critique of the story as a whole so far?

I think for the next chapter I'll have Celestia talk to Discord. Maybe he points out that he noticed that Luna was actually an Alternate Self. When Celestia asks why he didn't mention that, Discord can reply that it seemed like Celestia was happier not knowing/Celestia didn't notice, so she couldn't have been that different. Then the last chapter can be Celestia admitting to Luna that she doesn't know how to respond to the situation, and trying to accept Luna anyway. Bittersweet but not (quite) as vague as the original story.

"The only way to truly waste an idea is to shove it where it doesn't belong."

I know this isn't what Sereg and Midnight meant, but it seemed like as good an opportunity as ever to start.

Good night.

There is no beginning. There is no end. There is only... Hooty.

I get the impression that Celly and Nightmare Moon aren't really seeing eye-to-eye on the nature of NMM's crimes. NMM is beating herself up for killing "her" Celly, but Celly doesn't seem to fully grasp the magnitude of that, or at least she considers it distinctly secondary. Because Celly is mainly angry at NMM for killing "her" Luna—but NMM insists she was just doing what had to be done.

So perhaps for an ambiguously hopeful ending, NMM could apologize for killing Luna, and Celly could make a point of forgiving NMM for killing Celly.

Celly's dilemma reminds me of the moral quandary from (what I read of) I Am the Actor: do you try to make the impostor fit the hole left by your departed friend? Do you punish the impostor by cutting ties with them? But there's the complicating factor that both Celly and NMM need (or at least think they need) each other as a "constant".

I wonder if it would be possible (or healthy) for Celly to say, "You're not Luna. But we can still be sisters and friends. After all, we're going to be spending eternity together."

If you're not careful, that could lead to a plot hole. See, I get the impression that, after NMM took Luna's place, events played out the same as canon, until NMM killed Tirek. Is this correct? Because the moment in your story where NMM does that—when Tirek is already stealing pegasus magic, and Celly just came up with Project "Give Twilight All Our Magic and Throw Her at the Problem"—happens while Discord is still squarely working for Tirek. So there needs to be some explanation for why Discord didn't go terrorizing Equestria by himself as soon as Tirek died. Which could be as simple as spelling out that Celestia didn't send Discord to stop Tirek in your AU.

edited 3rd Mar '15 9:16:29 PM by MetaFour

I didn't write any of that.

That was sort of intentional. I wanted to get across that the characters have different ideas about the situation they find themselves in; Nightmare thinks it a Non-Stable Time Loop, Celestia thinks it's either a Temporal Paradox or a complicated lie (i.e. Nightmare didn't actually go anywhere and just took over Luna somehow), and Twilight posits it's a multiversal thing (though she obviously only has a bit part).

Maybe it would streamline the narrative if I removed that aspect and made it so that all the focus is on one thing or the other. Though that might also make it a little bit shallower.

I Am Not the Actor was actually a Debate and Switch about how grief makes people do stupid things, but the comparison is an apt one.

I did consider that plot hole, and I'm still undecided how to address it. My original plan was to have Celestia imply that Discord refused to help (still bad, but not as damning as an explicit betrayal). Maybe I could edit the opening so that Princess Nightmare Moon mentions the Discord plan instead of the Twilight plan.

I also considered leaving him out entirely, but considering his alternate version started this whole thing and he's the only other immortal being around, I figured his input would give Celestia some perspective one way or the other.

So many possible directions, too many decisions...

"The only way to truly waste an idea is to shove it where it doesn't belong."

Great work so far! And yes, the chapters are long. Can't wait to see what you think of the first chapter of the story proper.

Well, I do think the moral aspect of the disagreement is more interesting than the sci-fi aspect. I like that they're talking past each other because they can't agree which of NMM's crimes was worst.

I didn't write any of that.

I haven't had time to read the story, but I'm definitely more interested in that aspect of it than on the mechanics behind it.

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Huh.. while the moral aspect is useful; and important... yeah I'd be more interested in first having some idea of how it was going on and getting the technical aspects worked out as well.

Well, the best would be to have both of course. On the whole I think it's a personal preference thing. I remember hearing somebody talk about that distinction in regard to Science Fiction in that there are generally two types of stories (with a big overlap in the middle, of course):

1. Ones focusing on how technology and science progresses

2. Ones that sort of Hand Wave the how and focus more on what effect the new tech has on society.

I tend to prefer the second type, but both have their merits.

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