Pony Fanfiction Thread

Holy f*ck, that wound up being huge. But the final chapter for Single Point of Failure is drafted. And it's big. @.@

EDIT: Needs more epilogue. Already thinking on ways to expand the ending.

EDIT EDIT: Might also be a good idea to put a chapter break into it and split it in two, either when Cardinal activates the Element of Magic or when Twilight recovers her identity.

edited 20th Feb '17 7:43:50 AM by TobiasDrake

Fucking hell man, you are voracious.

A little tip: Triple posting is considered highly bad manners. Same for double posting. It might be a good idea to wait a bit after posting your first one so others can chime in.

Normally, I would agree with you, but this thread moves at a speed best described as tectonic. I would consider ~36 hours to fulfill the criteria of "a bit".

edited 20th Feb '17 5:45:37 AM by TobiasDrake

And you had something significant to post, I think it's excusable.

edited 20th Feb '17 11:50:19 AM by TheHandle

Yeah. If more than half a day has passed, I'd rather see a double or triple post so that I get a watchlist notification, otherwise there's a 90% chance I'll just totally miss the edit.

Anyway, new draft finished, way too damn late. Been feeling under the weather lately, which has hosed my already slow pace. Good thing I had a holiday to muscle through things with. >.>

I have nothing against doubleposting as long as it's a substantial update.

But if all you're doing is adding something you forgot to add to the original post, you should just edit the original post.

Has anyone written a fic around the sentence "Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo"?

Working on getting the draft ready for publishing, but I wanted to share some original version notes.

The first version of the confrontation with Cardinal was more heavily focused on Twilight and Applejack. As I mentioned before, Cardinal was original envisioned as a sort of romantic predator, using his trickiness to try and steal Applejack away. Subverting the Elements of Harmony was still part of the plot, but he was also more directly trying to break up Applejack and Twilight so he could obtain "the heart of Magic" from Applejack; a bit of romantic symbolism that would let him control the Element of Magic without Twilight.

Learning about Sunset Shimmer allowed me to do away with the Heart of Magic concept, since she establishes that you don't actually need to be Twilight to control the Element...provided the other five aren't working against you, that is. I never intended it when I started but, in a way, Cardinal's endgame goal kinda became a more effective version of Sunset's.

The idea of Cardinal as nefarious competition died with the Heart of Magic idea and he became more of a general manipulator. At the same time, I realized that the other four members of the Mane Six needed to be more directly a part of the conclusion. It was thematically essential; this is a profound female empowerment setting and here is this male character whose entire M.O. is coming in and taking away their power. The climax needed to be about all six of them taking the power back.

The Cardinal's World sequence was a later addition, because I needed it to fill a hole in the climax. The next version had Twilight and Applejack reconciling, followed by Applejack making her pleas to each mind-controlled pony in the same order she does in the existing version. Problem was, Cardinal was just sort of standing there like a doof letting this happen and it's like, you've got the Elements of Harmony, why aren't you stopping this? There needed to be time when the mares could talk away from him, and that meant he had to win here.

Twilight's counterspell was the last thing added to the story. Originally, Twilight was going to try to steal back the crown with her levitation magic when Cardinal obtained it, to which Cardinal would use the Elements to shut down spellcasting entirely, remarking, "First rule of Cardinal's world: no magic." Later, when the Elements were restored, Cardinal would attack Twilight but the spell would fizzle, prompting Twilight to remind him of his First Rule in an Ironic Echo.

It was a nice Hoist by His Own Petard moment but, as with giving the Six a more direct role, it occurred to me as I was writing that it wasn't good enough. He needed to be hoist by Twilight's Petard. For the same thematic reasons, it wasn't enough that Cardinal fail to harm her; she needed to beat him.

@Santos: I don't know, but reading the related links of Wikipedia makes me want to use "James while John had had had had had had had had had had had a better effect on the teacher" in Ask Hoops And Dumbbell.

@Santos: Yes, at least two.

One of them was a Feghoot, as in the story was nothing more than a setup to use that specific sentence as the punchline. I don't remember the name.

The other was "Scootatitle", where one gag involves Twilight using that little factoid as a "get rid of Pinkie for a few hours" card:

Oh yeah, I actually remember the Scootatitle one.

Alright, that's it. Final chapter to Single Point of Failure is published. This story is officially complete.

Special thanks to Meta Four for all the help he gave me that made this story not entirely suck.

Anyone else read Jay the Brony's continuity? I just found it's got its own page now.

edited 20th Feb '17 9:18:43 PM by YamiVizziniX

Planned conversations during the Summit:
*Between a changedling and a Solar Guard. The changeling is complaining about not looking threatening anymore but concludes that the ponies must be pretty used to this already. Then a Lunar Guard thestral positions himself next to them and the changeling goes, "Oh, C'MON!"
*Between Starlight and Luna. Luna picks up on Starlight's doubts of her worthiness towards redemption. Luna claims that she and Discord were worse but Starlight points out she might have actually killed the world once. Luna points out that this was entirely by accident and, besides, didn't actually happen because time travel. A discussion upon the practical applications of ethics on time travel ensues. Conclusion: Don't think about it too hard and you're small-time, Starlight, get over yourself. Edit: Well, this is Luna's conclusion, Starlight doesn't argue too hard on account of princess but still carries malingering doubts.

edited 21st Feb '17 7:46:15 PM by God_of_Awesome

Actually, the argument between whether Starlight or Luna is worse is a potentially pretty interesting one.

I mean, Luna's plans may have potentially resulted in global extinction of all life, but she didn't get nearly that far. In fact, aside from being a little bit spooky, she did very little to actually hurt anyone. What, two guards, and her sister? Not a huge roster. On top of that, at no point did she actively mean to cause harm—she just wanted to be loved.

On the other hand, while the scope of her actions was much smaller, Starlight's actions were much more direct, and had a distinct, measurable impact on... give or take maybe two dozen ponies? We got a look at some of the methods he used to achieve and maintain that control: Isolation, propaganda, and more. And she meant to do all of those things. Sure, she might have thought it was for the best in the long run, but she still caused deliberate and direct harm.

So yeah, Luna might have had more potential harm, but at the tail end of a conversation about how "Time Travel doesn't count", it rings kind of hollow to claim that potential can compete with actual actions.

Of course, by those metrics Discord still has them both beat by a pretty wide margin. And he's still a pretty major dick even if he's no longer actively evil.

Damn plot bunnies! Now I'm wanting to start writing a pirate story! >_< I even got a guy drawn as a reference!

This is him. His name's Sea Salt. Though I have no real idea of a plot xD

edited 21st Feb '17 8:22:58 PM by theLibrarian

The latest installment in the increasingly inaccurately named Celestia Code trilogy.

Rought Draft of The Summit: Chapter 3 is up. I think I'll call it "Baby Talk".

https://www.fimfiction.net/story/364789/princess-celestia-is-replaced-by-donald-trump

I don't want to live in this world anymore.

Sad! Sick!

I might give it a read this weekend for the blog. Prediction: the humor will mainly come from regurgitating memes.

I will accept this as a thing that exists only if it means Donald Trump is replaced by Princess Celestia in our world. Never before have we needed a defictionalization so badly.

edited 23rd Feb '17 9:31:26 AM by TobiasDrake