Pony Fanfiction Thread

I'm more excited to see that a member of Eyrie Productions Unlimited has apparently made his way into MLP.

I don't read much fanfiction, but when I do...

OMG was that written for me? I will find out.

Slowly plinking away at "The Invitation." Hopefully I'll have a chapter of The Book of Friendship up by Christmas.

I never did think of a good plot to go with the title "Their Old Familiar Carols Play." Maybe next year.

From Dusk to Night's 46th chapter is now live. It ended up being 6000 words long.

Hey, I just saw your story in the feature box.

Yeah, it tends to find itself into the update slots despite low traffic. Never figured out why, but I'll take what I can get.

Man, you'd think I'd have learned to stay away from stories marked Tragedy by now, because it'll invariably leave me either feeling depressed because of the ending, or angry because the author doesn't understand that Tragedy is more than "sad things happen."

Now I got to go try and finish up my Christmas shopping while feeling like shit.

When you return, why not wash the taste of it out of your mouth with a nice, seasonal story I just finished? It's Christmasy! Well, Hearth's Warming-y. And follows my ongoing pseudo-series about the Equestria/Trottingham Santa Analogue, Uncle Tannenbaum!

Specifically, it's about Pip trying to make friendly with Diamond Tiara after her finds her sitting alone, and doing so by inviting her home to hear the story of how Uncle Tannenbaum first appeared. There's two stories interwoven: The story of Tannenbaum, and also a story in the framing device about just why Diamond was feeling upset.

That sounds like fun, I'll have to give it a read tomorrow since it's getting late.

I like character studies, especially ones that tend towards the sympathetic. This idea for dialogue, idealogue, isn't specifically about ponies, but occurred to me while reading a pony story.

A rich parent is worried their child's special somepony is just after their money. As the years go on, and child and mate continue to live frugal lives of simplicity, never asking of the family fortunes, it becomes more and more apparent that this isn't the case. However, the parent can't ever quite bring themselves to trust their child's mate. The parent remarks of this to their spouse:

"A little tiny voice in the back of my head keeps whispering, 'What if they're playing the long game?' I know that's ridiculous. Is is that even that tiniest bit of paranoia, when it comes to my child, is enough to set me on edge? Or is that I've spent so long thinking they were going to be a leech that I now can't think of them as anything else?"

Holy shit, I think I just figured out how to close the biggest plothole in ASMGDA.

Explain.

Now how to fix the plot hole, but what "Asmaguda" is.

A Still More Glorious Dawn Awaits

It's a fic that I started a long time ago and never finished. Short for A Still More Glorious Dawn Awaits. One of the main premises was that the Nightmare jumped ship right before Luna got hit with the Elements a thousand years ago, and it ended up in Twilight when she got her cutie mark. It always bugged me that I couldn't explain how it stayed off of Celestia's radar for the centuries in between. And now I have the answer. Incidentally, I now also have an explanation for why hatching a dragon egg was part of the entrance exam for Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns.

edited 25th Dec '16 6:45:36 PM by CDRW

Running into a problem.

I'm writing a segment in my story where a background element is explained via dialogue: That when the Canterlot guardstallion, Flash Sentry, has a brief flirtation with Twilight Sparkle, it has him hounded by the media and the public until he is forced into exile. This is related to the rest of the 8 by Rarity and Twilight, the only two, plus Spike, aware of that this happened.

My problem: The rest of the 8 are unaware of this, but the event was described as a media circus. How and why didn't the rest of her friends notice an infestation of reporters trying to bug Twilight about this? If they didn't show up in Ponyville, why not? I had this idea that Luna cowed them into submission by being really, freaking Luna, but that didn't sit well with me. Ideas?

An idea that did occur to me, while I was writing this, is that it all occurred in Canterlot, during whatever trip had Rarity and Twilight there together.

It's possible that Twilight has been accosted by so many reporters, ever since her ascension(Because hey, New Princess!) that her friends did see them, but simply didn't pick them out as being in any way distinct, and have learned that Twilight would rather just forget about the reporters rather than answer questions about them anyways?

This seems to be a week for Plot Bunnies for me. Working on my Christmas Story made me rather fond of the dynamic between Diamond Tiara and Pip, and I wound up having two ideas with them.

One idea features them older, working for Equestria's Navy—Pip as Ship captain, and Diamond Tiara as his First Mate. They would be performing some kind of mission—I don't have many details on it aside from that they both think it's kind of daft, but are going along with it because it's their duty, after all. Something to do with merponies, perhaps. To be frank, the age-up makes this feel so divorced from the source material that I may as well just recycle the idea into a piece of Original Fiction.

The other idea is fairly similar, but features them at roughly their in-show ages—shortly after Crusaders of the Lost Mark. During some kind of School trip, Diamond Tiara and Pip accidentally find themselves on a Pirate Ship—or in some way kidnapped by Pirates. Some quick thinking on DT's part keeps them from being tossed overboard, and as they try to find a safe way off the ship, they discover that the Pirates are searching for an extraordinary treasure—which, of course, they can't let them have.

The third plot bunny came tonight, and is... stranger. It was 'inspired' by a rather disturbing fanfic premise I read while browsing fimfiction. In the original story a character gets shapeshifted, as well as hit with a compulsion spell. The compulsion spell keeps them from revealing their true identity, and also makes them obedient to pretty much anyone who asks anything of them. Now, the story basically ends with them 'lost' and replaced by someone disguised as their original identity, which skeeves the heck out of me, but I do like the idea of a character stuck in a different appearance having to try to find a way to sneak evidence of their real identity to someone who would be able to change them back.

So the premise isn't very well formed yet, but the basic outline of it is there: A character gets transformed and replaced, and has to find a way to alert someone of their true identity, without tipping off the interloper and possibly getting themselves in an even worse situation, or killed.

The only real meat-and-potatoes I can give it at the moment is something like... Twilight gets turned into a Dragon, by a Dragon who then takes over her throne. But I like to work with side-and-minor characters as much as possible, so I can largely go my own way with characterization. Dunno. I think there's potential for something interesting there, I'll have to stew on it for a while.

Kind of reminds me of Solitary Locust, or For the Benefit of Mr. Kite.

Not sure if that's a good thing or not. The first result I find for Solitary Locust is Darkness-Induced Audience Apathy, and being too dark is something I tend to try to avoid—though I know that's always going to be a Taste Trope, of course.

Unless you were referring to the original fic.

edited 26th Dec '16 4:15:21 AM by kegisak

Presumably you wouldn't take it that far. But I don't even know what the original fic is.

I like it!

edited 26th Dec '16 4:32:50 PM by Pannic

Those path descriptions gave me flashbacks of Whomp's Fortress.... *shudder*

A dimly lit stall gave way I believe.

And the story is updated!

The passage is from the chapter after this one. Y'know, actually working ahead. A little.

My sister got me a new timer for Christmas that I think is really increasing my productivity.

edited 31st Dec '16 5:35:23 PM by Pannic

Triptych updated.

And also, I wrote a thing in the Humans In Equestria group again, where I once more attempted to compile my notes on my take on the subject, here.

Cliff notes version:
- Humans have a number of sapient relatives, such as orangutans and sasquatches, and, further out, ogres, oni, kongs and gizmonks.
- They're thinly spread out over the world. Even their countries are sort of overlayed over other countries.
- Human magic passively makes them into the Implacable Man. They don't have anything they actively do, except for those who don't mind running the risk of going mad.
- Humans are afflicted with the wanderlust, for reasons. This makes them get up, leave their homes and dick off to parts unknown, against good sense and possibly against their will.
- Humans have ageless immortal guardians like the ponies do, based off Shakespeare's fairies. They cast a spell so humans will always find a safe place to rest their wandering feet in Equestria.
- Due to the nature of their magic, these immortal guardians had to layer a number of curses on this spell as well. Wanderers are trapped for their whole lives in ponyland and many orphans are made before getting there.

edited 31st Dec '16 7:13:25 PM by God_of_Awesome