Why A Certain Winning Pony Is Such an Awesome Winner That Nothing That Happens To Her Is Ever Her Fault · 3:29am Jul 28th, 2014
(from an exchange on Loganberry's blog, with someone else). I wish to categorically state that these aren't Loganberry's opinions!)
>>4762305
Just look at Pinkie. She is obviously far outside the social norm, yet she is generally accepted as who and what she is by the town as a whole, and she is hardly the only canon example so I think it is reasonable to assume that a live and let live attitude is fairly common among the general population.
Ah, yes, Pinkie. Spreads joy and happiness and good cheer. Definitely the same thing as being a vortex of emotional destruction. Of course, she gets toned down from her full awesome canon self, let alone her even more awesome self in my fanon, into a barely-sapient sex toy, because failing to do so might lead to her outshining Our Heroine Cloud Kicker. Even the barely-sapient Winningverse Pinkie Pie (whose sorry state I attribute to having had some of her soul consumed by Winning-Through-Degradation) is still loveable and friendly, rather than vicious and destructive, though.
Now, individuals do obviously still judge others like how it is made very clear that AJ disapproves of Cloud and her behavior, but the response is generally avoidance, not confrontation, belittling, or any other form of harassment.
Who said anything about confrontation, belittling or other forms of harassment. I think that they'd just find Cloud Kicker icky and not want to be around her. Unless they were members of her own "fast set", or Ponies who were looking for easy lays.
Would they think less of her? Yes. Of course they would. That's the nature of a reputation -- if you get a reputation for doing good things, others think better of you; if for doing bad things, less of you. Doesn't mean that they torment you -- the Ponies are a pretty nice and generally non-violent species.
... so while Cloud definitely has a reputation, it does not seem to hurt her in any way.
Indeed. That is the curious matter of what the dog did in the night, for which I invented Winning-Through-Degradation to explain.
Ponies do most definitely take Cloud's reputation into consideration when dealing with her, but they do not shun her in any way because of it.
Which is odd, since her reputation should be one not merely for promiscuity, but for rather rude, disruptive and callous treatment of her friends. Who, instead of complaining of this, mostly lick it up and say "thank you, Cloud, may I have some more?" That is also what I invented Winning-Through-Degradation to explain.
As for the relationship issues, that is not the result of Cloud's promiscuity, that is serious psychological trauma resulting from Fluttershy's actions when they were children which has left Cloud afraid of getting into a serious relationship again and results in her various issues.
Ahem. While I don't write Fluttershy as a Poor Little Miss Innocent Examplar of Total Innocence (in fact I view that as one of the ways Fluttershy manipulates other Ponies passively into giving her what she wants), the fact is that in the vanilla Winningverse as written Cloud, before the fight with Rainbow, was being pretty sexually-aggressive toward Fluttershy. There is also the inexplicable fact that she then waited something like a decade to contact Fluttershy again, which is odd behavior for somepony in love. Fluttershy's subsequent statement that she had always loved Cloud Kicker shows remarkably poor communication skills even for Fluttershy, and is actually more consistent with my theory of Cloud Kicker having as symbiont an evil Shadow Parasite that wants to eat Fluttershy's soul than it is with the reasons given in the original story.
Here, let's take it as written in the original Winningverse. I'll Abridge it a bit ...
CLOUD KICKER: "Ah, Fluttershy, you are so beautiful and irresistible. I love you. Let us make mad passionate love for we love one another." SMOOCHY! GAMOUCHEY!
FLUTTERSHY: "Ah, Cloud Kicker, I love you too! Oh joy! Oh ecstasy!" SMOOCHY! GAMOUCHEY!
(later)
FLUTTERSHY (thinks): "Hmm, maybe we went too far. Now that I am not in Cloud's actual presence I somehow feel bad about what we did. I know! I will ask my dear friend Rainbow Dash what I should do ..."
(tells Rainbow Dash what happened)
RAINBOW DASH: "Why the evil slut! I will teach Cloud Kicker a lesson."
RAINBOW DASH and CLOUD KICKER: BIFF!! BASH!! Ooh! Argh!
CLOUD KICKER: "Crap, I almost killed Rainbow Dash. I know! I will avoid Fluttershy for the next ten years because otherwise I will be forced to fight Rainbow Dash again and then I will have to almost kill her again and maybe kill her for real. I will not try to communicate with either of them in any way explaining my actions because, plot requirements. And I will have sex with everypony who is at least even mildly interested because, angst.
CLOUD KICKER (spends next ten years having sex with everypony at least even mildly interested in her because, angst)
CLOUD KICKER: Oh joy. Derpy loves me. I will insinuate myself into every aspect of her life and make her children see me as a second mother because, joy. Also I will go look up Fluttershy because, plot requirement.
FLUTTERSHY: Oh wow! How nice to see you, dear beloved Cloud Kicker who has been avoiding me for ten years!
CLOUD KICKER: Nice to see you too, my One True Love who I have been avoiding for ten years for vaguely-specified and illogical reasons!
FLUTTERSHY: I still love you because, no self-respect.
CLOUD KICKER: I still love you too, because, plot complication!
CLOUD KICKER and FLUTTERSHY (make mad passionate love). SMOOCHY! GAMOUCHEY!
CLOUD KICKER: "Let us leave Ponyville and get married, my One True Love!"
FLUTTESHY: "Alas, I love another, and made love with you because, no self-control, plot complication. And no self-respect. Did I mention no self-respect?"
CLOUD KICKER: "Bummer. Ah well, One True Love easy come, easy go. I'll go hang with Derpy instead."
CLOUD KICKER runs into BLOSSOMFORTH
CLOUD KICKER: "Hi, virginal best friend who I constantly tease because I am such a tease!"
BLOSSOMFORTH: "Hi, slutty best friend who I hang with because you are so amazingly Winning!"
CLOUD KICKER: "How're things going?"
BLOSSOMFORTH: "I see you're sad so I want to make love to you for real!"
CLOUD KICKER (shrugs): "Sure, I can see absolutely nothing wrong with this plan even though it bodes fair to have both of my remaining best friends getting mad at me! Come to me, my One True Love!"
CLOUD KICKER and BLOSSOMFORTH: (make mad passionate love). SMOOCHY! GAMOUCHEY!
CLOUD KICKER: (goes to see DERPY): "Hi, Derpy, my One True Love!"
DERPY HOOVES: "Hi, Cloud Kicker. Haven't seen you around much lately."
CLOUD KICKER: "Well, that's because first I met Fluttershy and made mad passionate love to her but then she didn't want to get married so I hung out with Blossomforth and we wound up making mad passionate love. Speaking of which, would you like to make mad passionate love?" (prepares for SMOOCHY! GAMOUCHEY!)
DERPY HOOVES: "Oooh!!!" (socks CLOUD KICKER one in the eye) BIFF!!
CLOUD KICKER: "Wow. Why must my life always be attended by such violence?"
***
Now, given this basic plot structure, and leaving out Queen Chrysalis and a major Changeling invasion which are nowhere near as awesome as the Winningness that is Cloud Kicker herself, can you see why I feel that Cloud Kicker is not entirely innocent in the tornado-like emotional vortex of disaster that is her love life? Or why other Ponies would want to stay clear of her?
It is worth noting that this is strictly confined to romantic partners, Cloud has no problems with normal friendships like her bond with Rainbow Dash and she maintains healthy relationships with her cousins despite the fact that her trauma resulted in her freaking out and running out on the guard.
Which is kind of odd. Rainbow Dash is the Pony who attacked Cloud Kicker for (as she saw it) seducing and taking advantage of poor little Fluttershy, and who Cloud Kicker nearly killed and did in fact inflict serious long-term injury upon. Her cousins have no problem with Cloud Kicker despite the fact that she's dishonored and embarrassed their ancient aristocratic Pegasus Clan in at least two fields -- displayed cowardice and extreme promiscuity verging on becoming a cartoon character. This is the sort of thing that makes me start thinking "mind controlling alien psychovoric symbiont from beyond space and time."
Also, I have absolutely no idea what the hell you are talking about in that last (technically second to last, but the last one is three words) paragraph so I am just going to ignore it.
It's my explanation for why Cloud Kicker, in the Winningverse, can act like a total unreliable slutty lunatic and yet everypony is completely cool with this, to the point of scolding anypony who points out the obvious facts about her.
"Oh, Twilight, you're just such a weirdo prude, thinking that there's anything odd about her behavior. Here, why don't you study her close up until you grasp that everything about Her Winningness is just perfect ..." says Luna, the Alicorn who threw Cloud Kicker in prison for public lewdness toward her.
"Yeah, Twilight, she's real super in the sack so you'll like her! Hee hee, I used to be smarter but I lost half my mind somewhere!" pointed out Pinkie Pie.
"She's so Winning," said Rainbow Dash. "I totally forgive her for making a mockery of everything and everyone I stand or care for. Oh, and nearly killing me. I'm honored to have been nearly killed by somepony so wonderful!"
"Join the Winningness ..."
Yeah. Me, I'm for grabbing my Mnarean Star-Stone and firing up the old proton-pack at around this point.
Um, because Twilight's actually saved the day more than once, and for the most part is fighting the things that come out of the Everfree to inflict massive destruction? If she was Cloud Kicker, she'd be inviting them over for orgies.
And well, yes, of course the whole vortex of emotional anguish which automatically forms around Cloud Kicker is everypony else's fault. Never mind that most of it is a predictable consequence of treating other Ponies and their hearts like dirt. It's their fault, for daring to have enough self-respect remaining to object to anything Cloud Kicker does.
Because she's Winning. Through-Degradation.
This is so painfully amusing and sad to read.
I especially liked the "SMOOCHY! GAMOUCHEY!" part. I think I've invented a new sound effect!
2321994
Oh, the sad thing is the way that every single character not named "Cloud Kicker" gets abused by Cloud Kicker in the series, and nopony thinks there's anything wrong with this -- or if they do, they change their minds soon after meeting Cloud Kicker. Which is why I see a malign demonic influence at work.
I'm just going to say that I am very confused. What's going on?
2322044
I transposed a very long comment I made about the Winningverse, specifically The Life and Times of a Winning Pony, because I liked the little skit I'd written as an Abridged version of the plot. I explained in it why I don't find Cloud Kicker's personality and the reactions of other ponies to it at all plausible, save as consequence of demonic possession.
2322021 Reminds me of a kind of fanfic I call 'demonic possession stories' -- in which canon characters act SO insanely out of character (like, say, Big Mac in the notorious Sweet Apple Massacre) while still having their canon life and friends and everything, that the only explanation is that they've been possessed by demons, or replaced by aliens, or controlled by dero telaug rays from the caverns of lost Lemuria.
2322107
Well, since I've already been writing a lot of literal demonic possession, I figure why not some more!
2322107 Sigh. There seem to be an awful lot of those.
Incredibly Dense was a decently funny little story, and it made me read Life and Times of a Winning when it first came out. It was readable in a cartoonish sort of way but when it started adding plotlines and playing at serious business, I bailed. I left a comment about how nothing was ever CK's fault, how everything she did - no matter how jerkish or irresponsible - came up roses and was starting to ruin what could have been a fair series, the response (barely paraphrased) was: "LOL STFU DIPSHIT SHE'S SUPPOSED TO BE CHARLIE SHEEN."
Haven't read the remainder of it, the side stories, sequels, or in-universe stories since then.
2322261
Not that I mind different takes on the characters -- the original show is vague enough on some of the details that it can support different interpretations, particularly when it comes to aspects of life which the show can't show in detail, such as sexual morality or even to some extent orientation (given the lack of canon shipping for the main characters).
For instance -- though I write her as being both essentially-innocent due to neoteny and highly moral due to her upbringing -- the interpretation of Pinkie Pie as cheerfully promiscuous is hardly impossible given the source material. (She's just less awesome that way, and I prefer her more awesome). Pinkie is very strange, and "strange" can include "totally doesn't understand normal sexual morality and thus has none" just as readily as it can include "totally doesn't understand normal sexual morality and instead has her own and even more monogamous variety."
My deepest problem with her Winning version is that she's stupid and shallow, and we know from the show that she's highly-intelligent (in an almost-alien sort of way that doesn't connect easily with normal Pony reasoning) and has deep emotions, particularly toward certain of family and close friends. A stupid Pinkie is inconsistent with numerous things she does on the TV show and in the comic books.
The fact that this dumbing-down, this reduction of essence, seems to be applied in the Winningverse primarily toward Element Bearers -- and that it happens most of all with the ones who have a prior sexual history with Cloud Kicker -- suggests the obvious conclusion. Something about or in Cloud Kicker is consuming their souls.
Hence, Winning-Through-Degradation, whose title is a Shout Out to "The Desire To Degrade". Now that essay was inspired by the Winningverse, and I think the Winningverse was inspired by the desire to degrade the main characters of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic. And that this is largely its appeal.
Ironically, the events of Incredibly Dense are the reason why the (main Shadow Wars worldline) Pinkie Pie feels compassion for Cloud Kicker after she and the Paradise Entity neutralize her power by burning out most of Winning-Through-Degradation. Pinkie knows that, after the Winningverse Cloud Kicker broke the Winningverse Pinkie Pie, she felt enough compassion for Winningverse-Pinkie to try to arrange for her happiness. So she couldn't bring herself to complete the destruction of Cloud Kicker -- and the Paradise Entity, as a Three Laws compliant Deus Est Machina, couldn't kill Cloud Kicker no matter how nasty she was.
Yes, Pinkie Pie is simply that nice.
Actually an exchange in the comments of one of my stories, rather than my blog, but it comes to the same thing really!
2322642 For instance -- though I write her as being both essentially-innocent due to neoteny and highly moral due to her upbringing -- the interpretation of Pinkie Pie as cheerfully promiscuous is hardly impossible given the source material. (She's just less awesome that way, and I prefer her more awesome). Pinkie is very strange, and "strange" can include "totally doesn't understand normal sexual morality and thus has none" just as readily as it can include "totally doesn't understand normal sexual morality and instead has her own and even more monogamous variety."
OT but my own take is that Pinkie has the most 'experience' with stallions of the Mane Six. She's not some equine succubus, mind (hmm, has THAT idea been used in a fanfic?), but she has a rather easy time getting dates because 'will we have a fun time?' is her sole real concern. As compared to, say, Rarity, who wants to date a gentleman when she's not reading her saddle-rippers about wild passionate romances.
That said I still like a very early fanfic idea where Pinkie ended up marrying Big Mac and having a dozen foals with him. Guess it can't work now that they're cousins, grump.
2322764
Yes, but what does "will we have a fun time?" mean to Pinkie Pie? Given the fact that her idea of a great wedding is indistinguishable from a six year old girl's birthday party, I find it VERY easy to believe that stallions have thought they were in for a hot date with a "fun time," only to find that "a fun time" meant Tag or Chutes and Ladders or a really AWESOME session on the swingset.
On the other hand, going by Who Framed Roger Rabbit, playing pattycake to a toon is serious stuff. Like, retaining a divorce attorney level stuff. So who knows. But I still think there are a lot of annoyed and frustrated stallions running around Ponyville, and that Pinkie's got a certain reputation. "Don't even bother, dude, unless you want to spend the afternoon playing Tag."
2323046 Heh, yeah, there's probably a lot of truth in that. I based my argument more on a story where Pinkie invited guys she liked out for a picnic and asked them afterwards if they wanted to try some schmutzing und knoatching -- Pennsylvania Dutch for 'hugging and kissing'. According to her in that story they were usually willing.
Though your version of it works just as well!
2322712 See, and the nice thing about this is that I just read your fic and liked it.
2323240 That is indeed nice! Thank you!
2322764
If it helps any Big Mac and Pinkie are so far apart family wise that in most societies you really wouldn't be related (unless you really like to keep track and it is important to you). They are far enough apart that no nation would prohibit their relationship nor would they look at it badly EXCEPT for the fact that they keep saying COUSIN which make people think they are more closely related than they are.
Heck they are really more like this funny little scene in an excellent movie...
2324177
(*nods*) In my fanon Apple Fritter's had a crush on Big Mac, and he's thought about loving her too, unfortunately for them at different times of their lives. She's his third cousin on my geneaology, no "removeds." And Apple Bumpkin has a crush on him as of the night of Luna's Return -- and she's his first cousin. That last one's a little too consanguineous for Mackie, but then he also thinks she's a bit simple-minded too, which is also an obstacle where he's concerned.
2322764
My version of Pinkie Pie has no problem getting stallions interested in her. The thing is, most of the ones who get interested in her just want sex, and she's not okay with casual sex. Until very recently, she hasn't been interested in stallions that way at all -- she's very neotenous, and her psychological and emotional development has greatly lagged her bodily development. Over the last year to year and a half she's started to feel stirrings of interest in the opposite sex. The two stallions she's felt this toward were Big Mac (slightly) and Cheese Sandwich (strongly). If she'd never met Cheese, she might well have fallen for Big Mac. He might have returned the sentiment too -- he likes her.
2324205
It is funny that you mention that since Pinkie has more random interactions (not words because as we know it is a joke that you don't hear him talk much) with Big Mac than about any other Mane 6 character outside of Applejack.
I always liked that duo as they seem to bring out interesting things out of each other. Heck it appears in "Apples to the core" that they bring out a philosophical side to each other which is very different from most of the interactions involving those characters.
2324217
IMO Big Mac reminds Pinkie Pie of Igneous Rock. She may complain that he was boring, but during her childhood he was the strong source of comfort in her life: he loved his little pink step-daughter, and that love was returned. Like Igneous, Big Mac is strong, mostly silent, and smart as a whip underneath his reserve.
One really big similarity is that both stallions have a very protective sort of strength -- neither of them is at all brutal. A girl's male ideal begins from the model of her father.
2324239
Lol reminds me of the story "Pinkie and the Agent" where she says the same thing to a character she has to call "The Agent". They are dating and when he asks her what she likes about him her answer is that he reminds her of her dad (which he remarks is often something that makes guys nervous but he says he will stick around anyway). Good story wish it had finished.
I would love to have another Pinkie/Mac story from that alternate reality when Pinkie had the apple cutie mark.
2322107
The most (in)famous of these being, of course, the original Cupcakes. "Demonic possession" is perhaps the simplest explanation for Pinkie's behavior in that story.
In one of my stories (Doomsday), I blamed the Cupcakes universe for all the "demonic possession stories" ever written about the MLP universes - even the ones written before Cupcakes, if there are any (time travel and Eldritch Abominations are involved). Yeah, that means that Cupcakes is partly to blame for Cloud Kicker's behavior in the Winningverse, even though they are completely unrelated.
Quoting from my story:
I hate to 'defend' the Winningverse as it's horrible but that's not an entirely accurate representation of events.
Cloudkicker didn't see Rainbow Dash for some time after the incident, because amazingly nearly beating each other to death engendered some bad feelings, but they wrote each other for a while eventually. And avoiding Fluttershy had nothing to do with fear of Rainbow Dash beating her up.
No, avoiding Fluttershy was very obviously a case of Cloudkicker actually realizing she may have been taking advantage after the fact and, being a fuckup, avoiding Fluttershy because being around her makes her feel guilty rather than trying to make amends or anything. It's not bad writing, it's not even vague, it's just the protagonist being unlikeable and selfish. This isn't even one of those 'death of the author' things, it's pretty clear from some of Cloudkicker's internal monologue at a few points. But, hey, at least it means Cloudkicker's characterization is consistent. Consistently horrible.
2328664
My point is that Cloud Kicker's claim to deeply love or have deeply loved Fluttershy was seriously-inconsistent with her behavior toward her for something like a decade afterward. As was, of course, Fluttershy's behavior toward Cloud Kicker, but Fluttershy is terribly shy, after all.
Though, really, in the same situation my Fluttershy would have passively placed herself in positions where her love object would have had been unable to avoid noticing her existence, unless she condisdered her love utterly unreturned. But then, my Fluttershy is more passive-active (manipulating events through apparently passive means) than truly passive. (The main reason I don't really see her as passive-aggressive is that she's not very aggressive, and when she is aggressive there is nothing "passive" about it.
In context: Cloud Kicker and Fluttershy are both highly-mobile entities (being pegasi), and either could easily find the other.Also, Cloud Kicker was on the Ponyville Weather Patrol for years before suddenly remembering Fluttershy's existence, and Ponyville is not that big a town. And Cloud Kicker chose to remember Fluttershy's existence at about the best possible moment for drama, but the worst possible moment for her life and the lives of everypony connected to hers.
Supposedly, Cloud Kicker's insane and extreme promiscuity -- one exceeding the bounds even of normal nymphomania -- originates because she sees loving Fluttershy as leading to disaster. But she's in her tweens to early teens by that point -- most of her psychosocial and sexual emotional development should have already occurred. This would be a really extreme reaction on her part to a situation in which -- after all -- nopony was actually killed.
What's more, this is close to the opposite likely reaction to such an event. Much more common given the precipitating cicumstances would have been for somepony to become incredibly prudish, since the obvious conclusion would have been "sex is dangerous" rather than "sex is triumphant." (The Winningverse Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash seem to have come to the more obvious conclusion).
This pretty much demands explanation because it seems to have been a fairly major personality change on Cloud Kicker's part. Before this, she was sexually-passionate; after this, she becomes absurdly-sexually-active but emotionally-passionless, until the flag raises for "story to begin" and Derpy gets under her emotional defenses by being her friend and coming on to her (IMO, because everypony else knew better, but Derpy is consistently in almost every story that features her in most fanons a really Horrible Judge of Character).
The resulting three-way contest between Derpy, Blossomforth and Fluttershy seems to have been to see who has the least self-respect. Though my refrain for Fluttershy in my Abridged Version is "I have no self-respect," Blossomforth winds up the winner of this race. Fluttershy actually seems to be falling in love with somepony else (I'm guessing Twilight because this is an Everypony Is Bi kind of universe and Chengar already paired off Rarity with Applejack and Rainbow Dash with Pinkie Pie). Which makes the fact that she has sex with Cloud Kicker anyway either an elaborate form of revenge (it might have been for my Fluttershy, who is a really good emotional manipulator), an act of nostalgia, or further proof of her lack of self-respect. Derpy may have once had no self-respect but respects her offspring.
Blossomforth is single, has no children and seems to really love Cloud Kicker, though in real life people who act like her (becoming the real One True Love of an insanely promiscuous person) are often extremely dedicated and ruthless manipulators -- think Yoko Ono to John Lennon. IMO give it a decade or two -- Blossom will be Cloud Kicker's procurer and also very willing to destroy anypony she sees as a threat to her emotional relationship with Cloud Kicker -- one Blossomforth will wholly dominate, even more than my Fluttershy dominates my Rainbow Dash, because my Fluttershy has moral limits.
2328702
Well, it is Cloudkicker. I'd take any claims of deep love with a grain of salt. It might feel that way to her from being Cloudkicker's first and for a long time only relationship with actual feelings involved, though. But I think the avoidance out of guilt shows how 'deep' the love was. Deep enough she cares more than usual but not deep enough to do anything that would make Cloudkicker feel bad.
2328728
IIRC Cloudkicker's fillyhood love for Fluttershy was actually her first love and first sexual relationship; her later attractions to Derpy, Fluttershy and Blossomforth her first emotional experience of love after a decade spent banging everypony in sight but loving nopony.
But your point
is spot-on and shows why I find her a very ugly character -- she is hideously selfish, even when she actually does love somepony. What you see in Life and Times is about as nice as she ever gets. Which isn't very nice at all.
2328738
Yes, and that's really related to the central problem of the story: It worked (it wasn't particularly good but it... wasn't yet horrible) when it was a mindless comedy but after it got popular the author started trying to take it seriously.
Cloudkicker was always an ugly character but you can have totally unlikeable protagonists in a comedy that are somehow still amusing (see BlackAdder, though that's a lot better written than Winningverse ever was). But the same characters do not hold when you take the goggles off. Take Black Mage from 8-bit theater. He's a murderous sociopath but it's played for comedy so people like him. In a serious piece, they'd want him dead.
You can have villainous protagonists in a serious piece, but you need a different kind of villainy. People may enjoy reading about Hannibal Lechter or Darth Vader or Doctor Doom but they don't enjoy reading about just some everyday jerk.
a vortex of emotional destruction...wow.
2438779
Observe what actually happens to the Ponies who make the mistake of getting close to Cloud Kicker, rather than paying too much attention to her rationalizations of why this is all just the way things happened, or even her occasional regrets that this happened, right before she goes and does the same thing again.
2323046
One of the notable differences between Cadance and Chrysalis being Cadance was that the real Cadance loved Pinkie's concept of a party.
Which also highlights that Chrysalis is not as good an Infiltrator as she imagined. Ceymi would have been dancing right along with Pinkie Pie, because that's what Cadance would have done.
2439369 Hey, I love Pinkie's idea of a party. If only more parties were like that. But she also likes the "music is too loud and I can't hear myself think" kind, which isn't my kind at all.
Cadance probably likes any kind of party, as long as it's planned and thrown with love. Not to mention that it's her wedding to Shining Armor, and therefore the best wedding ever. Hey, I bet that she STILL thinks it was the best wedding ever, even after all the stuff that went down.
2439533
I think that your concept of a party and mine are highly compatible. But yeah, Pinkie is foo frenetic and high-energy for most people to want to spend very long times with, especially outside of parties -- which is why I think Cheese is perfect for her.
Ceymi would have gotten that Cadance is a very nice, friendly, down-to-Earth sort of mare, and behaved appropriately. Chrysalis was failing to suppress her own character, which is a no-no for Infiltration.
The problem with the Winningverse, and don't get me wrong, there are SEVERAL, is the author is not writing a story, but a series. Which is fine, in and of itself. The problem arises because it's a series that does not have a coherent overall storyboard to plan it out. I myself write a series, and I plan out storyline for a three chapter arc, but when I introduce a plot element, I go back to my own story, and make sure it makes SENSE based on all previous events. If you look at the original story that started the series, the relationships of characters are obviously not matching later events. That's a huge problem, because the backstory snippets basically contradict what we've been shown. Through the course of the story we discover that Cloud Kicker is basically a ruiner of worlds. She drifts through life without an apparent care, and everyone she touches (yes, sometimes in that way, frequently, actually) is changed for the worse. Fluttershy is made into a social recluse because she wronged Cloud. Rainbow Dash is sexually traumatized to the point of being afraid to even touch herself in a sexual way, much less allow anyone else to.
And then we have the Kicker Clan. Oh lord, where do I start. The Kickers are Equestria's own personal martyrs. They live and breath to be the epitome of what a pegasus is supposed to be. They are the one clan privileged to keep their identity when every other pegasus clan was disbanded for rebelling against Celestia. They basically exist to make Cloud even more awesome.
At the head of this is Shadow, the Christ of Equestria, who in all likelihood made love with Celestia and added Alicorn blood to the mix because if there was one thing Cloud needed, it was to be descended from the most badass pony ever, and also Celestia. (This, incidentally, makes the fact that she banged Luna very awkward. Since you know, incest.)
The thing you have to remember about the Winningverse is that it exists solely to make Cloud Kicker into the King of Limbo. Princesses, Elements of Harmony, everypony in it only exist to further her greatness.
I actually have a theory. I think the entire universe is one giant hallucination by Cloudy, who actually occupies a padded cell right next to Screw Loose. Every day Rainbow comes by to beg her to take her medicine, and Cloud tells her another tale of her own greatness. If I ever write it, I shall call it The Incredibly Troubled Mind Of Cloud Kicker.
2443264
I see what you mean. Since at least "A Meeting By Moonlight" I've known that the thrust of my series would be "How Ponykind rises and fights off all threats to once again walk the road to the stars." And since Nightmares Are Tragic, I've known that the greatest threat would be the menace of the Shadows, that they would be the Big Bads behind all the lesser threats (some of which, like Windvane's Rebellion, I only thought up later on). Within a few months I also knew some of the major character themes I'd be doing -- Fluttershy's Ascent, Twilight and Luna's Reincarnation Romance, Rarity's rise to vast wealth and influence, Spike's courtship of Rarity, and so forth.
The original Winningverse story, The Incredibly Dense Mind of Rainbow Dash, reads like a hatefic about what idiots are Rainbow Dash and Pinkie Pie, and how wonderfully cool is Cloud Kicker, by virtue of her promiscuity. It's as if Chengar took the Trope Virginity Makes You Stupid, believed it whole-heartedly, and then went with the logical inverse "Sexual Experience Makes You Smart." This seems in any case to be Cloud Kicker's asssumption.
This is particularly jarring because both the main series and the Winningverse have a character in it who is both a virgin and incredibly intelligent -- Twilight Sparkle. This gets rectified in a side-story by Ponibus in which we learn that Twilight's only that way because her family is going to make an arranged marriage for her and she's a dutiful daughter who doesn't want to spoil things.
Rainbow Dash is an idiot because she's a virgin. Pinkie Pie is very sexually experienced (in the Winningverse) but she's an idiot because ... well, because Chengar seems to be taking her character on face value and ignoring the frequent hints the show has made that Pinkie actually has a powerful but alien intelligence. There's no excuse for this because the first such hints come in the original Elements of Harmony -- Pinkie instantly recognizes Twilight's importance, is the first (even before Twilight) to perceive that the plasma cloud on stage is Nightmare Moon, and locates the key book for Twilight at the Library.
There's also no hint in the original series that Pinkie Pie is sexually experienced. She acts like a hyperactive child, not a seductress, and we never see her doing anything remotely sexual with anypony until very late in the show (long after the story was written). In series she really likes Twilight, Applejack and Rainbow Dash; in Season Four she seems to be having some attraction toward Big Mac and Cheese Sandwich.
Chengar's assumption is that any adult pony who acts so random and is clearly hedonistic must be sexually-active. I disagree with both assumptions -- Pinkie's randomness is constrained by an intense code of honor (which is the reason why she gets along so well with Rainbow Dash, Twilight and Applejack who are similarly constrained, but not with Discord who has only a rudimentary code); and the assumption that "hedonism = sex" (it most certainly can be, but Pinkie seems more into childlike parties, singing and dancing).
Mind you, Pinkie's promiscuity is the least of my objections to her Winningverse portrayal. I think that "promiscuous" is one reasonable way of interpreting her behavior, and I have no problem with the way she's portrayed in Ardashir's or AlaraJRogers' worlds. My real problem with the Winningverse Pinkie is her stupidity. Pinkie is childlike and silly, not stupid.
One of the reasons that I regard this as hatefic toward Rainbow and Pinkie is that both of them are degraded in-story. They are both portrayed as stupid. Rainbow doesn't notice Pinkie's very obvious attraction to her.
But worse, there's a scene in Life and Times of a Winning Pony where Rainbow is actually dumb enough to go to Cloud Kicker for tips on dealing with Pinkie Pie, and Cloud Kicker tells her something to the effect of "She likes being touched this way. How do I know? Oh, I banged her. In a hedge at one of her parties. Well, I mean she'd obviously banged a lot of Ponies before, and has banged a lot of Ponies since, so what's the big deal?"
In context: this is after Rainbow and Pinkie have fallen in love. Cloud Kicker is saying this about Pinkie to her beloved. There is no way that this can be interpreted other than as malicious, especially given the formulation.
This scene is one of the key reasons I named the entity that possessed Cloud Kicker in the Shadow Wars universe "Winning-Through-Degradation."
And I haven't forgotten the hedge scene. In the Shadow Wars continuity, Cloud would be describing to Rainbow the scene in which she destroyed the mind and infected the soul of that worldline's Pinkie.
Unfortunately for Cloud, this is also why in most lines Pinkie Pie instead defeats Winning-Through-Degradation. Because Pinkie Pies communicate with each other between parallel worlds, and so a threat to one is soon identified by all.
(more later, have to leave for work)
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And, what I find even more strange, nopony calls Cloud Kicker on this. Oh, particular victims may call her on the specific thing she's done to them at the particular moment (though they almost always have a change of heart and "realize" that Cloud Kicker was not only right all along but was the coolest ginchiest conglomerate of Winningness that ever was.
And nopony ever ever ever publicly makes the point that Cloud Kicker is a vast amazing repulsive slut who trails unhappiness everywhere she goes. Because that would be rude and unenlightened, or something like that. Which presents the Warped Aesop that Chengar's Equestria could use a dose of good old 19th century sexual judgementalism, because that could protect it against abusers like Cloud Kicker.
The only good thing that can be said about her effect on the Winningverse Rainbow Dash is that at least Rainbow avoids being an slut like a lot of the Winningverse versions of characters. But since this is at the price of not only turning her against all sexual pleasure but actually inflicting permanent physical damage on her, possibly to the point of sterilizing her -- and of course, it's fanonically all Rainbow's fault, as Cloud Kicker never gets blamed for anything.
And Fluttershy, yeah. All the crap that I blame on being half-Changeling, nearly being raped by her cousin Ill Wind, and being seduced and abandoned by Nosey? In the Winningverse Cloud Kicker does all that damage to her. Single-hoofed. Well done, Cloud Kicker!
The worst of it? The Winningverse Fluttershy isn't even attracted to Rainbow Dash, just to emphasize what a huge loser Rainbow is for daring to have any concept of chivalry. This is despite the fact that the Winningverse has a huge stallion dearth and hence widespread lesbianism, and the degree to which Dashie and Shy are affectionate with one another in canon. Dashie is also a huge loser for loving Pinkie Pie too, because she was apparently the town's other bicycle in this continuity -- the one with the cute streamers and training wheels.
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Tp be fair, any descent from Celestia would be a matter of 30-40 generations. Cloud Kicker would be about as closely related to Luna as I am to most of the population of the United States.
Is it ever confirmed that she actually banged Luna? I assumed so, because in the dream Luna urges "discretion," which is probably a word Cloud Kicker's never even heard before. But I wasn't sure.
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Indeed. A greatness which, as far as I can see, is based on her having lots of sex, knowing martial arts, and ... I don't know. Ironically, the one thing about which Cloud Kicker could reasonably be proud -- her love and insight into history -- she tends to minimize. "I'm the biggest slut in Equestria, but don't let ponies know I'm a historian -- it'll ruin my reputation!"
You forgot the magical
lesbianfart babies.2524967
Ah yes, that.
I didn't want to go into it because it's an assumption about the magical nature of the world, in terms of establishing alternate laws of biology (which I can accept as a premise) rather than requiring alternate consequences of social-strategic interactions (which I cannot, not without much more alien psychologies on the part of the Ponies than they demonstrate in the show).
But as to that -- I can't pretend to be an expert on it, but among the established rules here are:
(1) There is a huge Stallion Dearth, so huge that monogamous marriage to a stallion is an unrealistic life goal for most mares. This is itself strange, because it means that any and all stallions born should easily find mates, and generally higher-status ones than themselves, which would create biological selective pressue for male births).
(2) Instead of the obvious social solution to the Stallion Dearth (polygyny), marriages are still mostly monogamous, and most mares refuse polygyny, instead being bisexual, with some lesbians. This would normally be very much biologically and culturally selected against, except that
(3) The Power of Love results in a fair number of births to mares from mating with other mares, to the point that Lyra and Bon-Bon have to worry about this happening accidentally. That story talks about "protection" against such pregnancies, but short of magical amulets (which one would think would make sex much less enjoyable since they would be directly interfering with the Power of Love to operate) I have no idea how such "protection" would work, given that no sperm are being produced: I'm guessing that if physical this works something like the virgin births in some reptile species with the stimulation being vaginal to vaginal fluid contact.
Now, see, there's a problem with this because virgin births in such species are always clones of the mother. This doesn't seem to be the case in the Winningverse. I've never seen any explanation for this, but then I haven't read all the stories.
One really odd thing about the Winningverse, given that pregnancies are evidently mediated by The Power of Love, and that the main protagonist of the stories is a nymphomaniac, is that they are terribly anti-erotic stories. Generally, sex is described either as "we banged" or as some sort of tiresome duty which must be performed to maintain winning status. This is often the case even when the characters are supposedly in love.
There is a lot of pyschobabble ("relationship" for "love," "significant other" for "lover", "finding ourselves" for "learning to love one another," and so forth). There is very little honest emotion. What there is a lot of is creepy, socially-sadistic domination of everypony else by Cloud Kicker, as she destroys the lives of her supposed beloved friends. And a lot of painting anypony who doesn't love and respect their little Fast Set and its curious customs as being hypocrites and liars (including, of course, famed liar Applejack, who Just Doesn't Get It).
What's really weird is that in one story it's implied that male homosexuals can have babies through The Power of Love. Channeling the lovable and rather cynical midwife-scientist-sorceress Golden ("Granny") Pie from my verse for a moment:
"T'aint possible. The plumbing just ain't there."
What might be possible (if two Y-chromosome-equipped halves of a human genetic code could make sweet love and one of them was attached to something with the nutrients for mitosis) would be an ectopic pregnancy. But that would require removal of the fetus at a very early stage to something like a Bujoldian uterine replicator. Did Equestria have this technology 900 years ago? Does it have this today?
Seriously, Goldie Pie has more trouble imagining the implantation of the zygote and its nourishment in the fetal stage than she does The Power Of Love. She believes in love; but she also believes in fundamental equine anatomy, since if she ignored it she'd have a lot less grateful patients and a lot more dead ones at the end of her working day.
This isn't a dig against homosexual love, either. Goldie has no problem with gay love (though she, herself, is faithful to her husband Jasper Quartz). She has a big problem with sperm somehow meeting despite the absence of a vaginal canal, or fetuses surviving despite the absence of a placenta. The lesbian-made babies are a bit easier for her to see as plausible, as she lives in a world of odd genetic hybridization, and at least a mare has all the right equipment to carry a zygote to embryo to fetus to foaling (*).
When converting Winningverse to Degradingverse I assume much less of a Stallion Dearth, and that the babies of lesbian couples are sired in more plausible ways, unless there is high-level Unicorn or Alicorn magic involved.
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(*) Maud, Claire and Pinkie Pie were all sired upon Goldie's virgin daughter Cloudy through magical means by the Paradise Entity, but that thing is almost a god -- something that cannot be said of Lyra or Bon-Bon.
uggghhhhh that story like serioussssly
Like, I appreciated the impulse. I have, at times, felt the need to write stories about a charming, empathy-bereft hedonist and their adventures in Ponyville. Wasn't actually too big a fan of the whole Charlie Sheen angle, because Two And A Half Men sucks and Sheen isn't actually all that charming a dude/character to base a hedonist on. Too jaded and dark to be a 'fun happy Joey Tribbiani' type, and yet not enough sangfroid to be a libertine Lord Byron type. Anyway, that's not the point.
Point is, what Steel Resolve said. Long-form romance is hard without a definite plan, and long-form comedy is even harder. It could have been a decent comedy fic (though not quite big enough to justify being LITERALLY EVERYWHERE FOREVER ON FIMFIC though that may be professional jealousy speaking) if it had ended, or if CQ had tight reins on plotting and tone, which he didn't.
Tone is fucking hard to keep consistent over a story that long, more so when you're not planning well ahead. My longest story is all over the damn place tonewise, and I've given up any hope of reining it in by now. When I wrote Pipsqueak's Day Off, I already knew better. Aimed it at 30k words (overshot by 20k, but that's still the fic over and done with in five chapters), planned each chapter itself out very tightly and made sure I knew what the story structure was going to be down to the scene. All because I knew that the story would endlessly spin out of control without it.
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They have to restrain her so that she doesn't surprise bang anyone in all her delusions.