So, what do we do now? · 10:50pm Jul 22nd, 2015
So Feeding Problems draws to a close, begging the question what to write next. I have a metric ton offew ideas, of varying levels of appeal, some with actual chapters written already just to see if it was worth writing. But I’m curious if anyone is actually interested in reading any of these ideas in particular, so could you let me know? Open to other ideas too, or infinite variations of any of these.
Here’s a little comic to save you from reading the massive spoilers, as the rest of this post is pretty much nothing but big reveals for various potential stories.
• Firestarter Spitfire spinoff
I loved this blog to death when it was alive, and I had a neat idea for revamping it, the only problem being I write a whole lot better than I draw. Basically, Spitfire vanished mysteriously, and it’s up to Lightning Dust to save her. Also Homestucks.
• Trixie is the Element of Magic
Somewhat a look on just how much it would suck to be the very embodiment of arcane sorcery, even in a magical society. Trixie’s got to overcome that, and overcome Princess Celestia’s colossal fuckup in mis-identifying where Magic would manifest, by a good 600 miles. I got kind of stuck on how Trixie’d get treated at the ratty orphanage off in the gryphon lands. I’d work on it more, but I don’t know if anyone would really want to read it. It’s just yet another “Trixie is special” fic, after all.
• Human->Pony in Equestria
I was messing with this as a concept, and ended up with a really spooky Outsider vibe. Could go with that, if I could stand my writing constantly reminding me of my own dead end life of failure. It’s hard to explain why this story’s got potential; you really just have to see it.
That uneasy feeling surged in her chest, and she looked back askance, giving a sharp cry when she saw that the tree she was bucking wasn’t in her apple orchard. It wasn’t nothing sensible, like just a tree she hadn’t planted; that would have been fine and dandy. It wasn’t like a tree she’d forgotten, or something crazy like a pear tree growing out of place. There was a tree in her apple orchard that was not in her apple orchard. Something that horrified her more than she could explain. This was a tree that should not be. And just as she realized this, her hooves made contact with it, and everything went sideways.
• Human->Pony in Equestria less srs version
Human turns into pony in Equestria, at the very beginning of season 1. They use their genre savvy to befriend the main 6, and proceed to reenact the plot of the episodes, except with them added in as a 7th. Very quickly, everything goes horribly wrong. I don’t think anyone has ever written this before.
• A deconstruction of Friendship is Optimal
There are a lot of shaky assumptions behind the Optimalverse, and even behind the LessWrong guys who thought up the ideas it’s based on. I could present a compelling story that totally rips those apart, and maybe leaves us less pessimistic about the future.
This would be a relatively short thing, though might end up episodic I dunno. I actually have uh... 6 chapters written already, and it'd be maybe 8 at most b/c they're already at the climactic moment.
• Ponies come to earth and start gratuitously transforming people into ponies.
in an alternate universe, Discord broke the fourth wall and fcukced up the plot in Return of Harmony deliberately, in order to tear the pony world away from the show, before the Baby Cakes episode happens. Ponies start to notice much later when they get older, but don't have any actual way to reproduce. Aging and desperate for solutions, they find the human world, and with the naivete of creatures without genitals, decide it's our responsibility to bear their legacy. Chaos ensues.
My biggest problem was the characterization. I wanted like, a semi-silly human world where things are a little more happy-go-lucky than reality, but I couldn't think up any personality for the main character besides "Hapless bottom rung office worker." And that really has been done to death.
Pros:
◦ it has shit-all to do with The Conversion Bureau
◦ I love, love, love transformation stories.
◦ I actually get to use OCs instead of having to adhere to canon personalities.
◦ the premise is actually pretty kind of clever I think, or at least hasn't popped up here before.
Cons:
◦ every part currently written is written in laconic, second person greentext, which isn't allowed here.
◦ 11,000 words so far, of laconic, second person greentext
I'd have to rewrite it to get it allowed here, and I find rewriting kind of frustrating, so that's a minus. But I think it’d be a fun story, so I dunno. Might be worth rewriting anyway, if for no other reason that to be allowed to flesh out the plot, instead of trying to confine myself to the restrictive poetry of laconic, second person greentext.
• Guy changes into cute babby pony, shit blows the fuck up
An engineering student is turned into a pony, and tries to make what sense of it she can via science, while it seems like the original pony's personality is slowly subsuming her own. The reality is much more sinister and less dire, as the agents of the planet's destruction will let her remember everything easily once she fulfills their requirements. Meanwhile Lyra discovers a song that isn't sound in the air, and when it starts getting too loud, Bad Things start happening to reality. Ponies come into existence retroactively, and leave equally retroactively like they were never there. Ponies have their entire histories rewritten, even their names changed. Friendships appear out of nowhere, and become strangers again overnight, sometimes not symmetrically. Obscene parephernalia seems to keep it at bay for some reason, but only constant vigilance can keep her agents from being summarily overwritten. Celestia tasked her with stopping it, but the princess can only do so much because she is very frequently wiped clean of any knowledge of what Lyra discovered.
Then uh, Jupiter's red spot disappears, and the MLP show inexplicably adopts a darker storyline. Some writing staff go insane. Things kind of snowball from there, and well, they're really really sorry, but it was the only way. The world is ending and nobody realizes it until it’s far, far too late. But mostly the protagonist changes into a cute babby pony, and scientificizes about it adorably while losing her mind from the pony taking over. They’re going to save everyone.
• The Colgate Conspiracy
Colgate gets sucked into a web of lies surrounding dentistry, with surprisingly horrifying parallels in the real world. Basically a foil for me to complain about the sorry state of oral hygiene these days. But I swear it's totally entertaining!
• Tongue in Cheek Moralistic Pony TF
People getting changed into ponies to cleanse them of their evil human urges and failings, except the ponies doing this are foul mouthed sexually deviant badasses, and the people they go after are the goody two-shoes morel orels who actually play a greater part in all the hatred and suffering in the world than the perverts. Oh and they're G1 ponies, so as stated it might not be allowed on fimfiction.
• Dinky Doo and Doctor Who
This might be entertaining, if nothing else for how much I absolutely loath the Doctor Who series. Don't really have a specific plot in mind though, never pursued this idea very far beyond some really cool “gotcha” moments that would be awesome to write. Basically Dinky is a young time lord, and she never asked for this. She tries to live a semi-normal life and escape her fate, and blames everything on her cheerfully smug, eccentric "uncle" who ended up accidentally looming her.
"Don't ask questions, just come quick, or all might be lost!"
"I'm in the middle of class, dad! Don't you have a time machine?"
......
"So you see you cannot possibly be my biological daughter. The looms you see, are how--"
"Yes yes I get it, ancient space sorceress bitch gets mad, curses all of us with impotence. I hate you so much, dad."
.......
"That's funny, I was sure I was going to be the one to save the world."
"Oh there you go, hogging the spotlight again. You god damned insufferable peacock!"
.......
"Why, why do you hate me so?"
"You created me, you prick!"
"...but that's a good thi-"
"I can't stop being 12 without dying!!"
• A sequel to Feeding Problems
Pros
◦ there’s still stuff to write about, stuff I never had a chance to reveal.
◦ characters are already established, not that it’s hard to find those in fanfics
◦ I get to write about Scootaloo learning how reproduction works for real ponies.
Cons
◦ The big reveal of what Scootaloo is drove the entire story, so it’d just be generic adventure or something now.
◦ I won’t be able to say I ever finished a story, then.
◦ This was just some stupid joke story spinning off a comic where Scootaloo was a bug. It’s not even what I like to write about!
◦ There are so many other things I have to write about.
◦ I am so sick of writing and rewriting this, you don’t even know.
So uh... probably not, for now.
• Aliclone
So the recently coronated Princess Twilight is doing some spring cleaning and digs up that old safeguard that she put in place, to spirit her safely away to a magical container, if she was ever blasted with life threatening amounts of magic. It’s not empty.
• Delayed Action
So Twilight Sparkle vanishes in a titanic blast of magic, only to appear as the glorious Princess Twilight Sparkle, 10 years after she was pronounced dead. Oops.
• Scootagineer
Sweetie Belle discovers that she is actually a robot. That’s not the big reveal. The big reveal is that Scootaloo is a child genius, who was so forever alone that she had to build herself a friend. Avanture ensues.
• Twilight of Arabia?
On the run from warlike ponies stranded in an arid alternate Equestria, Twilight manages to defeat them all with a really clever application of friendship.
• Lily Valley: Action Mare
Some dork gets transformed into Lily Valley, and then manages to destroy the facility, escape the prison island and join a secret task force that is the only thing standing between us and the robot rebellion.
• Sweetie Belle’s First Period
Sweetie has her first period. By the end you realize it’s not what it sounds like. She’s just really bad at grammar.
• Friendship Forum
Guy discovers new pony forum, blows up into spooky global anti-friendship conspiracy, with ponies at the bottom of the cover-up.
...mostly an excuse to talk about my ideas for Forum, which I can’t seem to program for the life of me.
• Changeling Redemption
Smooze is consuming all of Equestria, and the only thing that can stop it are the flutter ponies, but nopony knows what happened to them or where they vanished after some horrible ancient calamity.
• Changeling Redemption less srs version
CMC have been captured and cocooned and put through excruciating conditioning, turned into evil changelings mindlessly loyal to the queen, their every thought on how to heartlessly deceive their former loved ones and suck them dry. They get discovered and captured by the ponies, who proceed to demonstrate that the diabolical process by which you force someone to transform into your own vile breed is not limited to Changeling queens...
• Smoke
Twilight Sparkle is an ordinary pony living in a coastal village with a tribe of librarians, who try to keep intact the ancient legends and fairy tales of ponies flying and using magic. After an attempt to move prisoners goes horribly wrong, she touches one of the prisoners and ends up with the power of smoke. With her grounded brother who’s a police officer keeping her on the level, while he works the system from within, she must journey to the city and defeat Nightmare Concrete, to save her whole village from dying. Somepony is hurtling around the city leaving rainbow light trails everywhere.Scootaloo shrine aughgfh
• Cutie Mark Crusader Blank Flanks!
So the CMC discover that 1) getting a cutie mark is Bad somehow and 2) there's a huge conspiracy to make sure you get your cutie mark, whether you like it or not. There was a story that tried that, but it kinda flopped eh, and I wanted to write one that was less edgedark and more rollicking adventure.
"Apparantly stories will only be approved here if they feature the main 6 or are set in Equestria. Whether they’re actually about ponies doesn’t matter. So, probably can’t do this one."
Wait, really?
As for the story ideas... Hm...
• Trixie is the Element of Magic
• Human->Pony in Equestria
• Aliclone
• Delayed Action
• Scootagineer
• Twilight of Arabia?
• Reharmonized
These all sound like they could be good.
• A deconstruction of Friendship is Optimal
It could be interesting to see it picked at (I'm aware of the shakiness, or at least some of it), but I'm curious what you mean about being left less pessimistic; that could mean a variety of things, particularly in context, and some I expect I'd enjoy reading more or less than others.
• Changeling Redemption
• Changeling Redemption less srs version
These could also be good, I think, though, given how much changelings vary from universe to universe, it's hard to predict just how much I'd like it.
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There are some exceptions, but I hardly consider myself exceptional. Friendship is Optimal for instance technically isn't about Equestria or the main 6, but rather a computer simulated version of Equestria. There's a few very talented authors that get past it, like Sharkrags for instance wrote a story about Eris and... pretty much just Eris on earth. They already had a reputation from off of Fimfiction though. But it's really not something to fight against, as much as I wish they would allow ponified Earth fics carté blanche and ban all Equestria Girls references.
The general assumption is that a superintelligence would be an "optimizer" and that an optimizer would find the most optimal outcome included itself. Thus turning any technological age of enlightenment into a horrifying gray goo scenario, replacing the entire planet with teacups, for instance.
oh my god apparently it turns out you're my favorite person
good job
I'm absolutely willing to read through and comment on every word you've written
more comments on the ideas presented later probably, when I'm not at work
That is quite a lot of ideas indeed.
I greatly enjoyed feeding problems.
(and the short LPOE that you did, which you should totally upload).
I do like the concept of AliClone. http://www.fimfiction.net/story/219160/twin-twilights is an awesome one of this. I've seen no others.
Delayed action - I'm sure I've read this in some form. But it wasn't a popular story. It was good, I can't find it despite a few mins of searching.
Human into pony can be done very well, or very, very badly.
'7th element' stories are _hideously_ vulnerable to railroading where half of it is a retyping of the episode script, and the OC solving everything.
http://www.fimfiction.net/story/197104/nightmare-moons-tiny-adversary - is sort-of the only one I've seen that deals with this well.
There are significant interesting well-thought through large-scale deviations from canon.
This is a hell of a lot more effort than just retyping the episodes.
You have lots of good ideas, but my favorites are:
* Reharmonized
* Human->Pony in Equestria
* Scootagineer
Also a written version of Firestarter Spitfire spinoff would be intriguing (at least to me).
Full disclosure, I have a slight bias in favour of Purple Smart.
Also omg trying to choose between all of these great ideas...
Anyway, in no particular order of preference:
• Human->Pony in Equestria (I generally don't like HiE stories that much, but I can see you pulling this off really well)
• Aliclone
• Delayed Action
• Scootagineer
• Twilight of Arabia?
• Changeling Redemption
3261135
Don't sell yourself short; your writing just blows me away.
>Firestarter Spitfire
I know nothing about this blog!
>Trixie is the Element of Magic
I have a weakness for well characterized Trixie! There's just something so fun about the haughtiness and self-assuration. The answer to your question is that the griffons would treat her as their rightful hero and wait on her hoof and hoof, just as everypony should.
>Human->Pony in Equestria
There's not really enough detail here on the exact story, but I have to say while I have a lot of fun with Humans turning into Ponies, and sometimes with Humans in Equestria, I feel like combining the two really kills the appeal of either. :/ I mean, if I'm going to read about a character in Equestria, who is a Pony.... there's already a whole lot of that. All you really do is give your OC a super-special-snowflake background.
>Genre Savvy Human>Pony in Equestria
I am pretty sure that someone has written exactly that before, but I don't make a habit of examining 7th element fics starring totally-not-self-inserts. I mean, I'm sure you'd do it thousands of times better, and that almost makes it interesting in itself, but still, eeeugh.
>Deconstruction of Friendship is Optimal
I am all for anti-Rationalism! You do realize that it's not actually 'pessimistic', though, right? Their ideal actually is 'we end up destroying the universe but it's okay because it gets replaced by a way radder one'.
>Pony Transformation Mayhem
hype
anything with 'graiutiously transforming' is sure to catch my interest in one way or another.
I definitely want to see what direction you'd take this. Also greentexts are loads of fun - I mean, fimfic would be [even more] flooded with garbage if it allowed them, so i get the ban, but it's still kinda disappointing because they have a valid artform in itself. Do you actually have it posted as-is anywhere?
>Guy>babby pony
Iunno sounds non-specific. Actually sounds like some kind of weird inverse to Terms of Employment (which was fantastic) and that somehow got posted here, so. Iunno.
>Colgate
you can also win my heart by writing anything about Colgate
double especially if she's Colgate and not Minuette
triple especially if she's dating Twilight
>Tongue in Cheek Moralism
Sounds a bit too, uh, edgy whining about social issues behind a veneer of irony, but maybe I'm being cynical.
>Dinky Doo and the Doctor Who is terrible
Yes! Yes please! I mean, I don't hate hate Doctor Who, some of it was kinda fun, but the sheer frequency of it getting jammed with no adaptation or give into ponyfanwork is -frustrating-.
>Feeding Problems II: Indigestion
I definitely have a whole bunch of emotional investment into the 'verse you spiralled it into, but it's not at all something I'd want to see come back in the near future. Plus then everypony would have to a constant stream of new problems, probably even bigger problems because you can't have a sequel that doesn't escalate everything, and I think you've made them all suffer more than enough.
>Aliclone
this sounds amazing
A lot of the other ideas are, y'know, things I would love to read, but this actually seems like it might be grade-A Good Fanfic
>Delayed Action
Slightly less than the above - I feel like I've seen the idea somewhere or other before - but provides plenty of room for comedy/drama, whichever direction
you want to take it>ScootagineerThis feels like it wouldn't really go anywhere? I mean, uh, you have a dramatic/silly opening reveal premise and then I guess it's a random adventure fic unless something else actually -ties into- that premise, and then you just have a weird 'why are you using main characters when you are focusing on this randomly invented plot point that clashes with their extant roles'>Twilight of ArabiaI am interested in this twist endingit sounds like a short one-shot, you should write it>Lily Valleywhat.>First PeriodExtended Innuendo jokes are kinda boring. I mean, you've got a fantastic way with prose and wit so I'm sure it wouldn't be bad, but... I feel like you managed to capture the spirit of the entire fic in that like, one line.>Friendship Forumagain, what.>Changeling RedeptionThis is an okay premise assuming it doesn't get resolved with 'and then the Changelings became friends with everyone and saved the world'. Which I mean, I'm sure you wouldn't do, but. (Actually wait, duh, the title/summary discrepancy is obviously a red herring, Changelings have nothing to do with Flutter Ponies. count me interested!)>Cutie Mark Crusader Changelings!wait crap can you just write my joke title insteadthat sounds like a -great- ficThe CMC get turned into Changelings and because they're the CMC they try their absolute hardest to be the best lying love-sucking bugpones they can be. This naturally turns out well fornopony everi mean, reverse changeling transformation is also a neat idea, but>ReharmonizedSounds like a lot of fun and possibly an exploration of what happens when once lies becometrue, which is one of my favorite subject.Also I'm a sucker for Lyra and Bon Bon...I feel like I just told you write everything, basically. I'm not sure that actuallyhelps, does it. :/I guess, uh, I'd pick Aliclone, Colgate, and Twilight of Arabia as Top 3 three I'd want to see first?Also seriously send me links to everything you've written ever.3261402
That's the point is it'd be a retyping of the episode and the OC solved everything but then little things start to crop up, and you get to enjoy watching that OC's total emotional breakdown as they realize they have no idea what is actually going to happen next, and they probably maybe very likely absolutely certainly ruined everything.
Yeah, I just had some ideas for the unpleasant aftermath. The other one I read didn't go into that as much.
Oh, that one did pop up recently, didn't it! But no, this would be something much more serious than simply the fact it was duplication.
the short... what? "Let's Play, On Equestria?" I don't do gameplay videos, sorry. You saw my greentext, you mean? Can't upload it, the rules specifically forbid greentext, so would have to massively rewrite it.
3261488
Well, it'd be an irreverant sequel, not a retelling of the blog itself except maybe in blatantly canon violating flashbacks.
Reharmonized isn't one of my favorites actually, because I can't really see what the heck to do after shit hits the fan. Discord wins? Nopony minds being mind raped? Twilight gets banished and then imprisoned in a dungeon the place they banished her to? The Elements explode? idk
3261628
And I added another one too, help!
Aww, thanks.
I don't mean to insult myself. Writing is about the
onlybest thing I'm good at. What I am not good at is impressing admins. It's kind of spooky how easily I run afoul of administrators actually; sort of like a gypsy curse.3262016
I mean, obviously the elements work just fine and Discord turns back to stone – everypony can deal with the fallout afterward. Nopony can particularly blame Twilight (except herself, natch), this is clearly a setting were Discord is more monstrously than mischievously evil, and any consequences of his rampage can at least be scapegoated to him. The rest of the not-actually-the-mane-six get to have varying reactions on finding out their lives and personalities are a lie, and now they have new ones which are... subjectively better. I think the real interesting drama would come from, uh, their interactions with their families and satellite characters: the Crusaders, Big Mac and Granny, the Cakes, etc. I mean, they'd all be used to some more... unpleasant ponies, surely, so how do they adapt to the change?
3261135
Ah, thank you for the information.
"The general assumption is that a superintelligence would be an "optimizer" and that an optimizer would find the most optimal outcome included itself. Thus turning any technological age of enlightenment into a horrifying gray goo scenario, replacing the entire planet with teacups, for instance."
Well, yes, but the Optimalverse, or at least most stories in it, have the optimizer working (mostly) as intended for a good intention. Given all of the many things that could go wrong, I'd call that pretty optimistic.
So, I'm just going to go through these and give them a quick rating and a thought or two each. (I promise that I do like some of these, they just happened to cluster at the end.) (Also, I rate somewhat harshly.)
2/10. I'm not that interested in a story following LD. Also, Homestuck is an endless pit of crazy with an annoying and confusing fandom.
3/10. As you said, it's been done many times before. Also, these stories often make other characters come off badly. Overall, it sounds like a downer.
4/10. There really isn't much information here. However, it sounds like you wouldn't enjoy writing it, and I've been burned enough to have an aversion for all fics of this type.
2/10. "Take that" stories are never as good as you hope they'll be. It's better to just ignore the bad stories. Also, I'm not fond of making bad things happen in-story for meta reasons. It feels... cruel? (not sure if that's the best way to put it.)
5/10. See above, but this hasn't been done as much before and looks to have a better scope and tone. (Also, you've already written most of it.)
2/10 Again, not much information here. It sounds like an all-OC story, without much real plot, that could easily turn to all the worst parts of human fics. Also, it sounds like you wouldn't like rewriting it much. If you gave more information I might like it better, but as it stands, there's a lot of red flags.
6/10 Could be interesting, not much to go off of yet. (Oddly, I'd be more likely to read this if the protagonist was female. Probably because there's a much higher average quality in human fics with female humans.) I think it could be published if at the time of publishing it is connected to FIM. This means that even an eventual contact would work, you'd just have to publish everything up to that point at once.
4/10 Also a "Take that" story, although it could work as a one-shot.
7/10. I really like the premise, the only reason I don't rate it higher is that I don't really know anything about G1.
1/10 This is a "Take that" story that doesn't even have a plot beyond the rant.
8/10 I'd be interested, but don't write anything you don't want to write.
9/10 This is a really cool premise that could go so many interesting ways. Also, that is such a Twilight thing to do.
6/10 I've read a pretty similar story before. The ascension makes this more interesting, but I'd need to know when she left from and if she experienced any of that time to really judge.
9/10 Sounds like a cool reversal of Making Friends. Also a cool take on some existing fandom tropes.
?/10 I have no familiarity with the source material here, so I can't judge it.
2/10 This is pretty much word salad that tells me very little about the plot. What is there raises a lot of red flags, and I'm not sure why this should be ponyfic instead of just an action movie plot.
7/10 Could be a funny one-shot, don't let it go on too long.
2/10 Again, fics that are just an excuse to talk about something else don't make for good stories. Write some blog posts or put it in an appropriate group.
6/10 Could be interesting, mind giving a bit more information?
8/10 Could make a nice little crackfic. Don't let it get too serious or too big and it could be great.
7/10 Could be interesting, but what happens? Unless this is an alternate universe, things are pretty dark.
?/10 Don't know the source material, can't really understand what you're trying to say about the plot.
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Read it read it readit! It has flash animations that are sooooooooo awesome. Also Homestucks.
There is! But in this case Trixie actually suffers the consequences of huge amounts of power from day one, so she's got a massive insecurity complex, and a lot of self loathing. This was actually inspired from a fanart that was really... chilling. Plus there are already like three awesome stories out there about Trixie being a jerk with a heart of gold; I don't think I could explore that any further or more effectively. Trixie with a Jerkass Facade on the other hand...
Actually so far the story is about Applejack, dealing with the fact that she may or may not have gone screaming mad and dragged in a horror from beyond in to kill everything she loves. She really isn't sure yet. I was more on about how the arrival of this...event effects Equestria as a whole, and the actual OC is sort of indirect at best.
As I've said, if a story isn't set in Equestria, and isn't about the main cast of ponies, it isn't allowed here. I would have to be absolutely sure that what I have is solid gold, before trying to get a story that was about humans turning into ponies that wasn't about humans in Equestria approved. In fact my very first story here was a story about humans turning into ponies, that wasn't about humans in Equestria. You can't see it because it uh... was denied submission. It was kind of a dumb idea anyway. But just to warn you, if you are tired of "in Equestria" being tacked onto human->pony, you should look elsewhere other than this site for stories to read.
I personally find Human in Equestria pretty unappealing, because it's always about how humans are special snowflakes. Whether dagnasty evil or noble champions of lightitude or sexy manbeasts, it's always about ponies fawning over how exceptional these human creatures are. At least turning the human into a pony takes away that apparantly irresistable urge for humans to toot their own horn, when writing about their own species mingling among a strange race of pony shaped Ewoks. But more importantly, the human becoming a pony lets the internal conflict take precedence, the challenges of adaptation, the culture clashes. That all gets sidelined when everypony is awestruck at the big bald smelly ape beast in a two piece suit. When they're a pony, it doesn't throw the world of the ponies into disarray, at least not immediately.
She doesn't even make it past the Ticket Master before the main cast are trying to kill her! It's been three days since anypony saw the sun, and the apple trees are already starting to wilt! She just doesn't know what went wrong!
Well, in a sense, yes. They just always harp on the "It's impossible to discern if CelestAI is good or evil since she's a superbrain" aspect, so the story ends along the lines of "The universe is now way radder than it used to be. Or at least that's what CelestAI programs you to think."
Anti-Rationalism, I like that term. Neat!
Guh, yeah I can totally understand why they ban it. So many tryhards would see greentext on a chan, and think "Oh, that's easy, because it is much less words. I could totally do that!" and... yeah.
All my stories are available on a Corgitech VPS I rent for like $90 a year, though it's in the Netherlands so might not have the best reachability for you. This is the greentext one. (You wouldn't believe how hard it is to format something into actual greentext.) I honestly kind of failed at greentext in chapter 4, as what's there is already the summarized version of what it used to be. Need to make smaller still. Or better yet, write the story like usual and forget about greentext and about making it terse and fitting in a reasonable sized image board text post.
Yeah, it's hard to be specific with the spoilers and all... that story was my baby at one point, before I threw out the bathwater and started on Bloom Filter.
An engineering student is turned into a pony, and tries to make what sense of it she can via science, while it seems like the original pony's personality is slowly subsuming her own. The reality is much more sinister and less dire, as the agents of the planet's destruction will let her remember everything easily once she fulfills their requirements. Meanwhile Lyra discovers a song that isn't sound in the air, and when it starts getting too loud, Bad Things start happening to reality. Ponies come into existence retroactively, and leave equally retroactively like they were never there. Ponies have their entire histories rewritten, even their names changed. Friendships appear out of nowhere, and become strangers again overnight, sometimes not symmetrically. Obscene parephernalia seems to keep it at bay for some reason, but only constant vigilance can keep her agents from being summarily overwritten. Celestia tasked her with stopping it, but the princess can only do so much because she is very frequently wiped clean of any knowledge of what Lyra discovered.
Then uh, Jupiter's red spot disappears, and the MLP show inexplicably adopts a darker storyline. Some writing staff go insane. Things kind of snowball from there, and well, they're really really sorry, but it was the only way.
You mean like, carbon dating, right?
Yeah, I don't actually feel very strongly about goody two-shoes and their role in worldwide mayhem. But I just couldn't seem to write it, without sounding like I did, so I sort of got disillusioned with the story. Though I do have a soft spot in my heart for magnificently badass ponies. If there was interest I could work on it more though, make it actually presentable.
"Don't ask questions, just come quick, or all might be lost!"
"I'm in the middle of class, dad! Don't you have a time machine?"
......
"So you see you cannot possibly be my biological daughter. The looms you see, are how--"
"Yes yes I get it, ancient space sorceress bitch gets mad, curses all of us with impotence. I hate you so much, dad."
.......
"That's funny, I was sure I was going to be the one to save the world."
"Oh there you go, hogging the spotlight again. You god damned insufferable peacock!"
.......
"Why, why do you hate me so?"
"You created me, you prick!"
"...but that's a good thi-"
"I can't stop being 12 without dying!!"
fatherhood.
So, it doesn't just sound horribly spiteful and mean to a pony who just wanted to gracefully accept being forced to turn into a princess?
Think like, Richie Rich crossed with Jimmy Neutron. It... could go places. I always liked Scootaloo being mechanically inclined, anyway. Just turn that up to 11, and add a bunch of Bond villains. ...no I haven't thought this one through very far.
Craziest thing is it was a dream I had a couple nights ago!
Snake eateeeeeeeeerrrrr
But I didn't even get to the part where she was leaving the fabric dotted with red marker.
Cheerilee was so tired of having to clean up Sweetie Belle's messes.
Tyrants can only stay in power if they can prevent their subjects from making friends with each other.
Okay, take a flutter pony, a pony with insect wings, about the size of a regular pony maybe a bit smaller, subsists on nectar and morning dew, has powerful magic that can destroy sadness and hopelessness, filling you with a wonderful uh... feeling as it cleanses the taint from your heart and soul. Now imagine what they'd be like if they got really really hungry. It was a red herring though, because the story isn't about the Changelings finding redemption. It's more about everypony else realizing just how screwed they are when they find the one group who can stop the Smooze, and when they find out what happened to them. Changelings don't need to be redeemed, they need to be freaking saved, and there's no time to hope that they'll return the favor while the world is drowning around you.
Heh... that'd be fun too. Well, there was an ask blog that did it, but it kind of went to edgelord territory.
Aw, that's an awesome way to put it. Of course neither the liars nor the lied to will be comfortable with admitting it. And if they can just resolve their doubts, they'll have pulled off the greatest bamboozling of Discord, where the only thing his machinations managed to do in the end just strengthen the community and help bring ponies together. Uh, cough, not that I was going to give this a happy fuzzy ending or anything, cough, pay no attention to the ferret behind the curtain.
Okay I can do the Twilight of Ara--Colgate, really???
Thanks so much, I just had to stay up late to finish this. I love how you put such care into considering my ideas, and offered some insightful commentary on them that I hadn't considered myself. Now if only I could put as much effort into writing stories as I do to write comments like this.
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No, no, no that's the thing. He only mind raped Twilight. She was the one who did it to everypony else. He just wanted her to forget about her real friends, and feel like her fake friends were real and betraying her. He didn't for a second think she would actually brainwash those ponies into adopting the Elements and defeating him. And she thought she was just restoring their memories! It's actually all just a horrible, horrible accident!
I followed the link to your VPS and read the current entries for Aliclone and Delayed Action. The former didn't seem like it would be as interesting to me as the latter, but after reading the initial chapters you've written I decided both are quite interesting
Out of the stories that only have a few sentences describing their premise, Scootagineer is the only one that really stood out for me.
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See, I feel like most of these are issues of lame writing than any physical fictionalities of the situation. There's probably correlation because, uh, anyone who's going to immediately turn their self-insert into not a human probably doesn't want to give a soapbox on how kickass humans are, but. And I think that ponies would be able to deal with a random biped walking around pretty easily – with how many other sapient creatures there are and how unexplored the world is, something they've never seen before walking into town seems like it would be a near-monthly occurrence. I think, uh, the thing I saw handle it best in memory was A Sleeping Rose and its sequels, but that might be because I just read it recently.
Oh, yeah, I get that. I meant that Twilight was basically coerced into it via unwanted influence of an elder god, so she's not really liable in any sense, and her victims are now super-nice altruistic ponies, so they won't emotionally hold it against her either. The only consequence she'd really have to deal with is her own personal guilt.
Aw, no problem.
You have a lot of, uh, non-traditional ideas and plotting style, and it's a lot of fun to engage with that. Good luck with actually getting some of them into a finished state!
Anyway, thanks muchly for the scrapbook link, I'll be sure to take a look at it when I have some time!
join us in the PaP verse!
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Neverrrrrrrrr
3267868 join us, become a member of pony after people, strive to live and survive in a world where humans have vanished and the few remaining have turned into ponies!
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Oh, I wanted to reply to this and I forgot to.
Right, so it's nobody's fault in the end. But I wasn't going to write the story just about Twilight Sparkle. What about the others, who find out their entire life is a lie? Are they going to regress if that happens? What if they don't want to regress? Can they sustain their new lives without faltering, or are they not lifestyles that can be sustained? What if they feel responsible for the ponies they basically replaced? What if ponies start missing the old thems, since being squeaky clean paragons of goodness isn't all it's cracked up to be? What about Twilight's old friends, that she can't remember anymore? What if she doesn't like them the second time around?
There are actually a lot of consequences to shenanigans like this.
3262125 Wow, did I... never reply to this? First off, thank you for examining each idea and telling me what you think. It helps me have ideas for it. Even the ratings I didn't like much. I wanted to express some concerns about your comments though.
In particular, a lot of stories you categorize as "Take that!" fics, I think you may be too harsh on that sort of story, and you might otherwise enjoy some stories like that. What those stories are about (like most of my ideas) is a gimmick. It's not in any sense revenge or an attack on someone else. Your lowest rated idea for instance, "Dinky and the Doctor," I said I loathe the series, but the point of the story would be the conflicted feelings as a young time lord tries to deal with her strange and unasked for life, sort of like "My Life as a Teenage Robot," except with a really annoyingly cheerful uncle instead of a dour, serious aunt. I agree it's a very... weak idea, and definitely isn't high on my priority list, but saying it's a "take that!" story assumes that it would only be a "take that!" story, rather than having parts of it like that. So, you might miss out on a potentially good story, if you perceive everything that has criticism in it, to be only about criticism.
For that matter, "Aliclone" actually is very bitter toward the "Twilight is a Princess" thing. Considering I don't actually care whether Twilight has wings or not, it was getting kind of uncomfortable to write. I had an idea to make it about how sometimes our friendships are made strong by our flaws, but... that just meant being mean to pegacorn Twi even more! So, I get what you're saying about "Take that!" fics, but you were dismissing far too many of these premises on those assumptions.
When I read those "bad" stories, and actually enjoy some of them a lot, it still seems contrived that the plot would go exactly the same with a strange pony stuffed in there. I said "Everything goes horribly wrong," not because I would want to make that happen, but because I have a lot of ideas for how the character might unintentionally screw things up, and lead things to butterfly out from there. It makes more sense that the plot would change, despite their best efforts, and that's all I'm talking about. I honestly think more people should write stories like that, not out of spite for the ones that don't, but because I genuinely like to see actions lead to unexpected consequences.
OCs are not a bad thing. Bad OCs are a bad thing. Just wanted to mention.
As for the plot, in an alternate universe, Discord broke the fourth wall and fcukced up the plot in Return of Harmony deliberately, in order to tear the pony world away from the show, before the Baby Cakes episode happens. Ponies start to notice much later when they get older, but don't have any actual way to reproduce. Aging and desperate for solutions, they risk their very existence seeking answers in other worlds, and find other pony timelines where the ponies did gain a way to reproduce. Additionally, the bookworm incident (comics were still canon until DIscord comes in issue 24) leads them to discover a layered multiverse, where lower verses are fictional to higher ones. So, they find the higher verse that houses their creators, who of course have a responsibility to be held accountable for what they've created, and use the knowledge of reproduction they gained from a very... risque parallel verse, to preserve their legacy by creating ponies like them who can reproduce. Unfortunately, the S1 ponies are completely unable to understand reproduction on an emotional level, and do things that people with genitals would have severe problems with. Delicious chaos ensues.
So it's actually a good plot. Forgot to write it in, sorry. My biggest problem was the characterization. I wanted like, a semi-silly human world where things are a little more happy-go-lucky than reality, but I couldn't think up any personality for the main character besides "Hapless bottom rung office worker." And that really has been done to death.
That's because it is an action movie plot. Or, thriller novel, to be specific. Pony fics can be action movie plots, and some action movie plots are awesome.
Hey, it worked for Voltaire, and Cory Doctorow!
The rest of your criticisms/suggestions seem pretty spot on, and I have no objections.
basically she left at the end of MMC, and no, not at all.