Takes place after episode two of season two, but before the two episode finale of season two.
The mane six defeated Discord, turned him back into a statue, and reharmonized the world. Fixing everything Discord changed. Ponies who might have been influenced by Discord's powers, and the few unfortunate ponies who had a portion of Discord's power put into them, were all turned back to normal, and other than a few guilty memories, or in the case of the latter, a bit of mild insanity, all was well.
Not everyone who had a taste of Discord's power disliked it however, and, in fact, one unicorn in particular, had asked for it.
No one knows what drove the unicorn to ask for such power, but once he had it the poor unicorn had gone insane, throwing a few spells around and casually warping the fabric of reality. One of those spells teleported him away from Ponyville before the Mane Six defeated Discord, and while the distance didn't stop him from being affected by the world's reharmonization, it didn't get rid of the chaos in him entirely.
It was so small, that with effort, the unicorn could have rid it himself. It wouldn't have been too hard. After all, his special talent was offering psychiatric help through joint lucid dreaming with his patients. It was a nice ability, but it left him bored and tired of reality.
So instead of using his knowledge of how the mind works and his ability to fix unwanted issues through lucid dreaming to rid himself of the small portion of chaos energy in his mind, he used it all to amplify it, learn from it, control it, and most of all, use it to bring his own dreams and desires into reality, and warp the minds of anyone asleep to make them his obedient minions. Normally this wouldn't be too much of a problem, one blast from the Elements of Harmony would rid him of the chaos energy even if he tried to hold onto it, and his powers aren't nearly as strong as Discords yet, but there is one area that he might have surpassed Discord in.
Subtlety.
Equestria needs help. Equestria needs YOU. You may not know why just yet, but you will soon enough. The question is: Do you have what it takes to help the Mane Six save the day? More Importantly: Do you want to? After all, if a unicorn can get a hold of Chaos energy strong enough to bring his dreams into reality, who is to say you couldn't do the same, with a little bit of help.
UPDATES ON THE LAST SATURDAY OF EVERY MONTH
NOTICE: The system I have set up for the story hasn't been tested yet, so comments, criticism, and ideas are all welcome and very much appreciated!
Well, here goes nothing!
2630962
Quick question, Is there any chance at all of getting our original set of cloths back in the story?
2630962
Also, i like the idea of this story and can't wait to see it progress
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Not really, at least, not until the end. I just wanted to make sure that the reader would understand they don't have any items or anything from their own world with them, and giving them a different set of clothes seemed like a good way to get the point across of there being no chance for a difference in the adventure because of what you in particular have a habit of wearing regularly or carrying around with you a lot. Diversity is something I really look for when thinking of Choose Your Own Adventure novels, so I'm trying to add all sorts of options for you to do in the story, and a lot of challenges will have multiple ways of solving them depending on the choices that led you there, but I needed to at least get a basic template to work with from the beginning, so I made up the clothes thing.
If it helps though, you still have underwear and socks and such, I'm just choosing not to mention that fact in particular in the actual story, cuz I couldn't find a non awkward way of fitting it in.
I'm honestly making this whole thing up as I go.
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well thanks, that actually makes sense, thanks for taking the time to answer this and good luck with the story, i can't wait to see where this goes.
I was planning to do a game thing as well, but it would be hard to pull off.
Suggestions: COLOR CODE YOUR NEXT ACTION. I've thought of how to tackle 1000 chapters, one for each action, and the answer was to color code them and put them in one chapter. Then all we ponies need to do is read that section, and go on from there. I might even suggest linking different chapters. E.g. Chapter 5's Action 1 leads to Chapter 8, whereas Action 2 leads to 9, then 8 etc.
Also, try centering the action plan, and make it more appealing. Formatting is crucial in this, as I don't want to be skimping past the important things. Bold and underline objects and stuff, and perhaps even italicise certain features. It would make playing this more exciting XD
Also, please include dead ends and multiple endings
2631168 Thank you very much! Thanks for reading it!
2631188 Thank you again! I'm more than happy to answer any questions, I need to think about this in as many different ways as possible to get a handle on what the heck I'm going to do with it. I'm not going to lie, I haven't even planned out all directions the beginning choices will go in. My brain's stuck thinking mostly of the beginning-middle and ending-middle parts right now.
I like this idea. It's something that there definitely should be more of but unfortunately isn't
2631192 Yes the game thing is VERY hard to pull off, I've been thinking about this well before I finished watching season two, but I kept putting it off and finally decided either I do a quick run, make some mistakes, and fix this later on if I make any major game mechanic or story line problems, or I over think it and end up never making it at all, so this is me just charging forward and hoping I'm able to pull this off.
I'll be using this emoticon a lot I think.
I'm a little confused what you mean by color coding the chapters. I'm thinking you mean like, each choice branches off to a different color, then you scroll down to that color, and that will offer choices that are also in a different set of colors, so on and so forth? I'll admit that sounds pretty cool, but I don't know how to color code things beyond the basic ones the text editor gives you, and that honestly sounds like a lot of scrolling work for readers. Course, I think there's a way to get links to lead to other areas of a page, if I could use that, it'd be perfect for auto scrolling, but I really wanted to avoid people accidentally running into spoilers. The only real system I have going on right now is that each set of choices is a number, and each choice from there is . something of that.
Jumping out of the window is 1.1, and the choice after that is 2.1, asking questions is 1.2, and one of the questions will be 2.2, and another will be 2.3. OR I could stack the point system to make sense. Jumping is 1, the choice after that is either 1.1 or 1.2. asking questions is 2, and the questions will lead to 2.1, 2.2, 2.3, and whatever happens after you ask a question will be 2.1.1, or 2.2.1, or 2.1.2 and so on and so forth, but that's also really complicated...
BLARG THIS IS DIFFICULT.
I'll try getting a consistent and interesting system for decision making. Centering and having the choices bolded and underlined sound good.
I'll be sure to include bad endings and multiple major endings where you end up having saved or doomed Equestria and what you do with the rest of your life. One thing I'm a major of is writing major endings for everything. There was a PS2 game I played where very time you failed a level, depending on what level it was and how exactly you failed, you'd get a few paragraphs on how the rest of the world eventually met its end and what happened to your allies and enemies, it was great.
One thing I'm trying to work on more than different endings, is different ways to reach the same path, and different ways the major part of the game can go down. I'm still clueless how to write the whole direction of you being evil though.
2631241 Honestly if you know of any MLP CYOA fanfics, HiE or not, let me know. I've been looking for them, but the only two I ever found were the two posted on Equestria Daily, and they were both kind of joke fanfics.
I mean, in one, you ran around in your boxers and could hit on Princess Celestia (and get turned to stone) or Princess Luna (and die) and other silly stuff.
The second one was a bit better, with you helping save the Mane Five from Discord's control again (Twilight was trapped by a barrier) but it also involved a lot of jokes and ridiculousness.
They first story was good in its own way (didn't care for it much), and the second story was much better, but still too short and too ridiculous for my taste. I was always wanting an actual, SERIOUS CYOA story, and after reading those two, decided to begin work on my own while looking for one to read.
I'm not gonna lie to you man. You are in for a world of hurt with this type of "choose your own adventure" storytelling. Each choice branching out towards multiple outcomes and each outcome comes with a choice that may or may not be affected by a statistic. I have attempted this feat before and must let you know that It really isn't easy. Still I commend you for attempting this. Go forth brave writer. GOD SPEED.
BTW. If you need support, I'd be happy to provide it. Feel free to PM me about it.
2631275 its simple
[.color=red][./color]
^ you see that? Now replace the word red with html color codes, which can be easily googled. Just google html color codes, and replace the word red with the code (e.g. #009900) and viola!, rainbow coloured text, here I come.
Yea, use the color to seperate branching
2631441
What the heck, I tried that before and it didn't work at all!
Eh, oh well. Thanks for the info, I might give it a shot later, but I'm kind of leaning away from colored archives of stuff for now, primarily because I'd end up trying a ton for one chapter and wouldn't really know when to disconnect it from one chapter to the next. Maybe I'll make an index thing for it though that connects to other chapters, but man that also sounds like a lot of extra work...
I dunno, I'm tired and lazy right now, I really appreciate your advice, and I'll try to seriously experiment with it after a good night's rest. For now I'm going to wrap up a few of the first choice branches, format the choices a bit better, and hit the hay.
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Thanks a ton for offering your help. I'm always open to ideas on how to get this thing to work (even if I might be too tired right now to use any of them). I'm aware how difficult this is going to be (though perhaps I'm overestimating how willing I am to go through with this) but I'm going to try my best and with any luck I'll get something done. If all else fails, and if you're willing, maybe I'll divide parts of the challenges and let you and others write some of them, but I'm not sure how willing I am to not have full control of the story. I kind of have control issues with things.
I'm hoping to have the first batch of choices done by tomorrow, which is good, considering none of them have more than like, 250 words.
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. . . Oh dear lord, you're trying to pull off a Visual Novel styled Fanfic.
Best of luck to you chap.
Okay! Finished up the first set of questions for today, and got a good 1.5k words or something typed up this morning. All and all pretty darn awesome, now I'm off to go to church!
2631897 Thanks! I'm REALLY going to need it!
How do I jump window? (I need a password)
Okay, darn you. I was just toying with the idea of doing a choose your own adventure fic myself.
Seriously though, I love the idea of having multiple hyperlinks within a link to acts as a game of chance. Any chance that you need prereaders or someone to bounce ideas off of for the different tangential paths?
Seems like a lot of these choices should still loop back into the earlier options, but with possible added energy/stress points of some sort.
I think the most pertinent question I would be asking here is "Why ME?!" I can totally believe that I MIGHT be a hero in this tale for some unknown reason, but what skills are they looking for that I was chosen? Or was this purely a random grab of a human, and if so seriously? What problem could exist that the mane 6 CAN'T handle, but a totally RANDOM human can?
Oh, nevermind, here's the "Why ME?!" question. Interesting that it doesn't show up for when you're demanding answers. Wow, it almost matches my exact phrasing too.
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You need a password because it isn't published yet but I have parts of the page up. You won't need a password once I get it finished and published.
If you EVER make a CYOA fic or see any on here LET ME KNOW! I WISH TO READ THEM ALL! Even though if I start reading them I'll likely barely write for the entire time...
Try not to mention the hyperlink idea too much, I was hoping no one would ever notice, but I guess it's pretty obvious, but still, the less people catch on about it, the better...
2637836 I'm going to make these choices have a bit more of a difference than just that, but yeah, they will loop a bit. Pretty much (and I guess this is kind of a spoiler but not too much) depending on the combination of choices you make you'll end up at one of five action scenes with varying degrees of difficulty, and then depending on how you do there, you'll have three different major beginnings. This isn't including the evil path, which I'll be including later on.
2637857 You'll find out later on, and you might not like the answer, but I don't think it'll be too disappointing.
2637867 I actually meant to include that question as the first one you can ask in that box, but I was in a hurry and kind of tired so I fumbled the phrasing I suppose. I'll probably edit it later once I get it figured out in my head how I'm going to make it work.
2640261 um when will you publish the options and questions? and do you know any other fics like yours i really like the concept
2742243 Alas I do not know of any other adventure CYOA fanfics on here, or anywhere else really. I'm keeping an eye out for them though, and I'll let you know when I find one if you do the same!
As for the update, I'm hoping to get to a certain part in the story, at which point I'll update everything to that point. Should hopefully be done by the 29th, but I'm not entirely positive. I've been stressing out about stuff lately and it's making writing difficult.
2748610 thanks anyway
Hmm, links don't seem to be working.. I guess I'll figure it out manually.
5161570 There are a few links that just go to pages I haven't published yet. I'll check real quick though in case even the ones that should work are broken, and try to fix them asap if they are.
Please continue.
My device explodes?
NOOO MAH PHONE!!!!
THIS IS THE WORST POSSIBLE THING!!!!!