Pony Fanfiction Thread

You know what you must do, Tobias: Twilight and AJ should make out on top of the Map, with a tasteful Fade to Black just before things get too hot for a T rating.

I actually do have plans to involve the Map in one of my stories, because I had what I felt seemed like a fun way to involve the Map in a story. I plan to be respectful with it. I don't like the thing, but I try to keep "This thing sucks and I hate it" criticisms for my reviews.

Just because I, personally, don't like a thing doesn't mean I have to be a jerk about it in my story.

Besides, the show already beat me to . It was used as a massage table. Countless ponies have rubbed their asses on it.

edited 21st Sep '17 6:59:24 PM by TobiasDrake

Oh good, if only some authors could learn that sorta maturity.

It's the table's own fault for vibrating their asses while their eyes were locked. That's just, like, a universal signal for shipping.

If the map is shipping ponies...

Rereading Under The Northern Lights, still recommend.

A thought occurs to me. One of the aspects of my alt-verse is ponies were once ruled (more or less) by the Three Brothers, plus-sized immortal ponies for each tribe. Their influence helped fuck things up so much, that it summoned Discord & Strife and the Celestial Sisters had to take charge. The Brothers' sister was the only one trying to foster peace before she died and the Sisters showed up.

So, in and out of universe, how might it be interpreted that all the male rulers of pony kind fucked it up and only the females seemed to get it right?

It seems like it would lead to Women Are Wiser being an actual in-universe prejudice, rather than a common form of Positive Discrimination in fiction.

You might also get some complaints from the male-centric manocracy that your story is being misandrist. But screw those guys.

edited 25th Sep '17 3:00:21 PM by MetaFour

Are they related in any way to Chancellor Puddinghead, Princess Platinum, and Commander Hurricane? Or are they before those three founded Equestria?

Also, I second the motion of "Screw those guys."

edited 25th Sep '17 7:35:24 PM by TobiasDrake

Not sure where else to put it, but in In Different Skies, my CB-like fic basically involves, well a Conversion Bureau-like situation occuring on an alien planet. Do you suppose the land reclaimed by the Barrier resemble Ipretum's native environment, or would it be "terraformed" into something like Iris'^note The Equestria Expy environment?

edited 26th Sep '17 9:00:04 AM by SantosLHalper

Well, the unicorn immortal is Platinum's father or further on up the family tree, thereby actually giving her her title.

The other two brother don't directly rule their people. The earth pony had a nominally ceremonial position in the Republic as the "Merry May King", although his word held a great deal of clout. The pegasus maintained a position "off-to-the-side" of the Junta, not unlike a political officer, who would quietly breath down everyone's necks up-and-down the ranks. He answered to the commander but his advise was often heeded and he held some circumstantial authority ("According to Article XIV of the Regulations etc etc...") over her.

@Santos: Neither is any more realistic than the other, because they're both well in the realm of magic (or at least sufficiently advanced technology). The important thing, I think, is to decide which effect is better for your story, then build an internally consistent magic system around that. So you don't want your barrier to have a bunch of unrelated, thematically inconsistent effects—lest it wind up as confusing as Kryptonite. Which could really fit whichever you want: either the barrier transforms humans into ponies, period, or the barrier is a general terraformation spell, and transforming the local wildlife (including humans) is just part of the package.

Three more entries to my "Lore" series, instead of my normal stories.

Lore: Minotaurs
Lore: Diamond Dogs
Lore: Ponies (LOOONG)

Lore: Immortals

I'm currently drafting a sequel to my Magic: The Gathering crossover fic My Little Planeswalker: Twilight's Spark, and I've hit a bit of a writing snag. Here's a brief spoiler-ed synopsis of the general plot outline so far.

The sequel is one that's centered on Sunset Shimmer. As it turns out, she's ALSO a planeswalker (it's implied that this is because she could have been the one destined to become bearer of the Element of Magic in Twilight's place had things gone slightly differently, so their souls are more or less mirror images of each other's.)

The fic starts with some character development hinting that she still has some leftover resentment towards Princess Celestia, but is too afraid to really recognize and confront those feelings. This is compounded by the fact that pony!Twilight hasn't contacted Sunset in over a month thanks to being preoccupied with her studies of other planes, leaving Sunset feeling slightly bitter that one of her friends had seemingly forgotten about her. Then the plot kicks off with an unknown actor (heavily hinted to be "Mister Tezzeret," Canterlot High's new shop teacher, but we don't stick around long enough to see it confirmed) destroying the portal between worlds. Sunset becomes so distraught that her planeswalker spark ignites, and she ends up planeswalking to the world of Lorwyn.

Lorwyn in Magic: the Gathering canon was a world that was split between a world of eternal daylight, and a "reverse world" of eternal night called Shadowmoor, with the world transforming from one to the other every few centuries thanks to the magic of the faerie queen, Oona. After Oona was defeated, the two worlds became one, but what the unified plane would look like was left unknown. So Sunset learns that, in the unified plane, there's still some residual magic left over from when Lorwyn was still split in two. As a result everytime the sun sets, Lorwyn's inhabitants undergo a personality shift. During the day the positive aspects of every person's self are brought forward, while during the night all of their negative thoughts and emotions are made stronger.

So the main conflict happens when night falls in Lorwyn, and all that leftover resentment Sunset feels suddenly takes control of her body. Her "dark side" planeswalks to Equestria, and then removes her "good side" and places it into a porcelain figurine using the same spell Twilight used in A Royal Problem. The "dark side" then starts trying to take revenge on both Celestia and Twilight (the latter for supposedly "replacing" her). The conflict is eventually resolved by Sunset learning to accept her own resentment and confront it rather than hiding it away, allowing the two halves to become one again, and Sunset to finally reconcile with her former mentor.

The problem I'm having is that in this draft, Evil!Sunset planeswalks back to Equestria after the portal is destroyed. Since she's pretending to be her good half, it would make sense for her to try to deflect suspicion by pretending she went through the portal, but the other half has been destroyed and the Mirror is thus no longer active. I'm struggling to think of a way for Sunset to fool Twilight into no longer paying attention to the Mirror so she doesn't notice it's been rendered inactive.

edited 7th Oct '17 9:55:33 PM by Zennistrad

Final chapter of Damaged Goods is drafted.

Draft time. It might be slightly intense. >.>

Well, that was unsatisfying.

...in the intended way or another, bad way?

It was meant to be without a sense of closure. Originally, I conceived a more upbeat and unambiguously happy ending to this story, but it didn't feel right for things to be resolved so quickly and easily. Further, as I was setting up the outlines for the next story, "Lessons in Chaos", I realized that I wanted it to follow a theme of forgiveness, which I felt worked well with the characters and conflicts presented therein.

So the result was that while everything superficially wraps up, Twilight's still left in a position of questioning where she is and if this happy ending for everyone else can legitimately be considered one for her.

Oh, it definitely feels like what you were going for, and it was very satisfactorily written unsatisfying.

So good job.

@Tobias: Would it perhaps be better to merge this story with your planned sequel? Or would that be too much of a shift?

If that wouldn't work, at the very least you should add an Author's Note when you publish the last chapter, to reassure your readers that there will be a sequel, and you're not going to leave Twilight hanging.

I wanted a distinct dividing line between this and Lessons in Chaos because they're very different stories, but you're right: an author's note is probably a good idea.

Final chapter of Damaged Goods is live.

I was trying to figure out the best way to leave that author's note we discussed and decided to do it in the form of a "Next Time in [Series]" blurb with a short version of the description text for Lessons in Chaos, to come.

It's cheesy, but it gets the idea across, I think. I can probably cut it once Lessons in Chaos is posted, since at that point, it'll be easy enough to just drift to the next story in sequence and be like, "Oh, it's continuing from where Twilight was left off."

edited 9th Oct '17 5:37:54 PM by TobiasDrake

At last, I stopped writing this lore blurps and got back to my story and I feel good.

Eat your heart out, Jorge Luis Borges (and CS Lewis)