There's more than one way to lead, and more than one way to be an Element of Magic. An AU looking at the effects of a slightly different early life for two unicorns.
So yes. This resulted from wondering what Trixie would be like as an Element of Magic. Given the choice, I decided to make her and Twilight childhood friends because of the potential for their entire life to be a gigantic Bokke and Tsukkomi routine (a comedian/straight man routine).
I also think that Trixie would do well as a combat mage. After all, she's genuinely powerful (if not so powerful as Twilight) and more importantly she's very good at misleading and bedazzling others. In fact, this entire thing began with my writing the fight scene with Nightmare Moon.
Finally, the Discording she had is based in part off what happened to her in the Pony POV series.
Hope this at least gave you the odd laugh.
Wait, if this is incomplete, then what are the other chapters?...
236922 I'm not certain I'm going to do any more, it depends on my inspiration. If I did, though, they'd basically involve this version of Trixie reacting to the madness that is Ponyville.
Well that was enjoyable. If you do more chapters, I would be happy to read
. Very good way of having Twilight and Trixie be friends with Everypony.
Also if you do more, I'd like to see how Trixie and Twilight dealt with The parapsrites in swarm of the century, the dragon from dragonshy and the xenophobic attitude Ponyville had to Zecrora. Plus Trixie and Twilight suffering or knowing about Poison Joke, could make for a really interesting story.
238214 Oh, good lord, the Poison Joke. Wonder how that would end up going...
"Trixie! Stop using your fireworks every time you take a step!"
"She has. They just aren't listening to her."
238239 Lol, more the reason for you to write about it
Also what would Trixie's reaction be to Pinkie Sense? And maybe Trixie could ponder how Derpy see's perfectly with her mismatched eyes. And the FlimFlams, Oh how Trixie would love to upstage them. Did the Ursa Minor incident still happen as well? So many things you could write about, maybe you could write in an OC that replaces Trixie in Boast Busters, causing snips and snails to find an Ursa.
238250 I dislike adding OCs to reprise canon events. That said, I think I might be able to have some fun with it...
I have about six other ongoing fics on other sites too, though, so it depends on them to some extent.
238267 Well, I'll continue to track this story anyway. I would be interested in seeing where you can take this wonderful Idea.
I like this. Very nice telling with Trixie.
Pretty good story. There's a grammar error in the very first paragraph (a substantial majority of your life) but apart from that this flowed very well. I like this version of Trixie quite a bit, especially the dynamic with Twilight.
267041 No, that is a substantial minority. I'm putting her at about 18-21 in series, and they've known one another for seven to eight years - less than half, but not by much.
And thanks for your comment. I just got the verdict from EqD back... it wasn't nice. Something like one point five out of five.
(Since they also criticized me for using sentences that are too short, while my other fic got slammed for too many run on sentences with commas, I don't know what they want...)
This was a magnificent story. I really liked how Twilight and Twixie play off each other.
I hope you realize what you started. All the episodes can be done through this interpetation. And with you having this incomplete, a number of fans of this story will be looking forward to it. I know I am.
1218558 I thought Twixie was a pairing...
Yeah, I've been writing bits of this story along with my many, many others... I do have a series of events that parallel "Look before you sleep", though they invalidate the basic plot of another episode in the process. I could jury-rig something out of it, though.
Shall I post in episode-sized chunks? They'll be rather shorter than this chapter, but potentially more often.
How can anyone NOT like Trixie???
Too much awesome to count!
1218628
More stories, or episode sized chunks, would be great!
And if you don't, well, thanks for writing one of the funniest stories I've seen in awhile.
What does Trixie think she is, a mythbuster?
Well I guess for Trixie, if it's worth doing, it's worth overdoing. 
1237434 Overdoing? Pretty much, yes. She may not be officially involved with research, but working out her routines takes a lot of experimentation - and, of course, the best experiments are the ones where things explode.
Heh, that was pretty funny. I love how Rainbow was into the whole experiment. They'll convert her into an egghead yet!
Nice way to get her to reproduce the Rainboom. A little incentive goes a long way.
Mad Twilight is best Twilight.
I also like how Celestia is all, "I know it was you who caused it, but I know better than to think you'll stop and learn something other than how to cause trouble." Honestly, this is probably the most exciting set of students she's ever had.
Good work!
I really like your rendition of the Canterlot Wedding. Twilight and Trixie play off each other very well. I wonder what other episodes or situations would change in this head canon.
1648497 I've got a few little mini-ideas. The one closest to completion is a variant of Dragonshy, where Trixie tries something after Pinkie but before Dash. It involves basically carting an enormous box of supplies up the mountain to start with, and then using reference material (D&D-style books, which in this universe could be very well researched) to plan her method of attack.
Eeeey!
Long time no see! And I thought this was dead.
Heh, still very amusing. I love Trixie's one-liners and her general thought track.
Yeah, I noticed the green tint of magic in the episode when I first saw it but not even Twilight caught onto that bit. You're slipping Twilight, especially after the MMMM episode!
Nice resolution to allow the Changelings to co-exist in Equestria. Really, all they had to do was ask.
Nice work!
This is awesome. And thoughtful. And your Trixie is best Trixie. And her dynamics with Twilight is awesom.e EVERYTHING IS AWESOME
pls write moar. I love the way she defeats enemies. Or befriends them.
1650150
Thanks. I tried to write Trixie as using a thought train that's not quite insane (in fact, very insightful) but which makes almost no sense and relies on quite a lot of assumptions
I try to pay attention to details like magic tint in general. In "An oath", my changeling OC Mirror has three forms he invented for camouflage - unicorn, pegasus and earth pony. In each case, the "talent" indicated by the cutie mark is something that a changeling can actually do one way or another (avoiding damage is faked by shapeshifting it away, gambling is faked by being an empath and hence able to read tells effortlessly, and disillusionment is faked by shapeshifting own coat colour), and the unicorn is one where the general colour theme is "green" (so green magic makes sense), while pegasus and earth pony are white and orange (meaning that he will be less likely to lose track of which he is thanks to their wildly differing colours).
And the resolution of the plot, from a story point of view, was intended to give the others (Fluttershy, here) a bit of focus time. I don't want Trixie to take over the events, though she is of course impacting them quite a lot.
Among the other careers I think a changeling would be good at:
Acting and performance on stage
Child care (can tell if a charge is upset just as it happens)
Teaching (can tell who is the bully and who is not understanding well - perhaps teacher's assistant)
Lots of medical applications
Counselling ("Now, I understand that you're trying hard, but I just don't feel the love here...")
Anything where lie detection would help
The guards (as themselves this time) - ability to sense hostile intent? Sign them up!
1650242
Heh, good choices for changelings to get into. They are a living, (breathing?) mood ring!
I noticed that Twilight and Trixie didn't get the big hero moment but at the same time I'm glad. The others got to do something for once. OP unicorns anyway!
1650198 Heh, thanks. I try to have a bit of myself in Trixie, but then add a bit of someone else... if that makes sense... and so their behaviour is pretty close to "vitriolic best buds". They argue about absolutely everything except the important stuff - and if someone will spend ten minutes debating with you over the relative awesome factor of the Wonderbolts but won't even hesitate in putting herself between you and an angry demideity, that's pretty true friendship in my opinion.
I was sort of going for "crazy awesome" with Trixie. She's kind of cracked, but that same sideways train of thought enables a lot of her success. What sane pony would keep an anvil readily accessible at all times...
1650256 Pretty much. Trixie got the big moment in Elements of Harmony, Twilight got it in Return of Harmony, and this third one was everyone else to a greater or lesser extent. (Well, except Rarity. I'll have to work out one for her... but she did manage to handle Pupilla rather well.)
Oh, one fun character trait Trixie has is a massive sense of drama. Take the events of (my) Return of Harmony. She worked out where the Elements were, but decided it would be more impressive if Discord thought he'd won (and it would get him to stand still long enough, of course). A good deal of her indignation at the end of this chapter is that she feels a great dramatic opportunity to OBJECT!!! was wasted.
1650073 No fic of mine is ever dead! Though in many cases that will only be proven via necromancy. (it's not evil it it isn't human, or that's what Dresden Files teaches me...)
Hell, to this date at least two one-shots have been reopened for continuation on fanfiction.net.
Me: Oh hey! Here's that Trixie and Twilight story that the guy told me about!
*looks at the length of the first chapter*
Me: ....
Me: ....
Me: ....HOLY MOTHER OF GOD THAT'S LONG
1650506 That it is. But it's basically both Elements of Harmony and Return of Harmony in one go. These are sort of "episode parodies" almost, so the next two chapters are "Look before you sleep" and "Canterlot Wedding".
1650522 Idea: Break the first chapter into two parts, each about 5,000 words. That way, it's a little easier to get through.
Don't worry, this problem happened with me two, I wrote a chapter that turned out to be 8,000 words, so I split it into two 4,000 word chapters.
1650539
How is big chapters is a problem? Up to 10k words chapter is nice.
1650680 Well, often, in my case at least, it's that the chapter is so long I loose track with what's happening. I've found that 2,000-5,000 word chapters are overall the best length, not too short (then you feel like it ended too fast), nor too long (where's you feel it goes on forever)
It really depends also on the type of story you're writing.
If your writing something like Past Sins or Mare-Do-Well: Regeneration, I understand why you'd need such long chapters. That way you can have space for good character development.
If your writing something like A Night to (Try to) Remember, which is lightweight comedy, a shorter chapter length works better, because you're not trying to write anything deep or thought provoking, you're just trying to make your readers enjoy themselves or have a good laugh.
But then again, that's just my opinion. In my Iron Mare story, the average chapter length is about 3,000-4,000 words, which suits me just fine.
1650706
I get what you're saying. But I think one thing that maybe can go to other chapter - 'Return of Harmony' scene. Everything else is that exact character development and pretty much whole complete story, so no need to break it at half. So, it's up to Saphroneth to deside
1650725 Exactly. It's up to him to decide.
AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT:
You can check out the Iron Mare story I mentioned. It's on my page, obviously.
1650758
Your mind tricks won't work on me! I'll go and take a look at this story BECAUSE I WANT TO! You have nothing to do with MY DECISION, got it?
1650775 i take it you liked it
Thanks for the fave
1650725
1650706
Basically, my chapter length in the first chapter is often determined by when I decide to sling the one-shot up.
When it turns out to be popular and/or I have more ideas, I usually have a more sensible and better defined chapter length. That said, since I'm used to fanfiction.net where a few thousand words for a chapter is short, I will tend towards longer ones.
(The longest chapters I have are for a Naruto fic, where the first one clocks in at about 20K words, and that's certainly comedy.)
1651001
Can you give me link to your fanfiction.net stories?
1651012
http://www.fanfiction.net/u/2996114/
Yes.
(Two of these are actually TVTropes fanfic recs, which startled the hell out of me... the Pokemon one and the NGE one, for reference)
1651001 I see. It makes sense now.
1651578 At a rough guess, the number of my 15 or so published fics that were not intended originally to be one-shots is...
Three. Wow.
You have mastered the cultured insult. Also, Next chapter should be with Sombra.
This was nice. In fact, the way they dealt with the Changelings actually seemed more... in character for the show than canon. I mean, I know they turned Discord to stone but at least you can try to justify the Changelings's actions as seeking food while his are pretty much pure sadism.
The bit where Luna talks shop with Chrysalis was particularly great.
1654576
As it happens, I'm a brit, and I also played Company of Heroes: Opposing Fronts a lot recently. (The game with the most British voice acting I've heard in a good long while). So I was very much thinking in terms of "Officer and a Gentleman" for Shining Armour's lines. A True British Officer is stiff upper lip, and insulting without having to be crude. (There's actually a story of some Brit officers in Korea whose unit was nearly overrun because his request for help was 'we've got a bit of a sticky situation here' and the radio operator was American - to an American it sounds like 'things are going alright but we're running into resistance', to a Brit it sounds like 'we're running out of bullets and I'm keeping one out of the command post with a stick'.)
If my inspiration follows any sort of pattern, the next thing I put together will be a "regular episode" parody - say, Dragonshy or something.
But who knows. (I certainly don't).
1656030
In my mind, the reason that they were able to reach a negotiated solution in this case was because they had a way to get Chrysalis on the back foot without catapulting her out of the country entirely - that, and it's somehow easier to think kindly of someone who hasn't encased you in gunk...
In any case, I half imagine the motto of Equestria is "I destroy my enemy when I make him my friend".
And yes - I suspect the Changelings didn't have a full understanding of how love works for beings that aren't them.
I can fully imagine Luna and Chrysalis doing more of that talking-shop.
"You mean you tried to stop a group including two pegasi... with a river?"
"Silence thy mouth. We had about two seconds to think of something before Our sister hit Us in the jaw with a hoof."
1656549
To be fair, it was a river with an upset sea serpent in it. Maybe she was hoping he'd be angry and attack rather than sad and crying after she cut his mustache (making it a reprise of the manticore strategy).
Also, it we're discussing talking shop, the bit where Pinky helps Chrysalis do her musical number was pretty great, too.
I really, really enjoyed this chapter. I love how your version of Trixie acts and how she and Twilight talk with each other. They just have this wonderful dynamic that I love. It's the same with some of the other stories I love, the main character/characters can just make you love them so much, that you keep coming back for more, stories like Retired to Equestria. I also liked how you resolved the Changeling invasion and that they actually looked disappointed, I mean they go through all that effort to plan and perpetrate an invasion and it gets foiled and called off at the last minute
.
I enjoyed your use of magic and the mecahnics/technical side of spells such as Shining Armor's shield spell. Also YES! Luna had an important role this time.
I dunno what episode or original adventure you plan to do next, but I think it should be some of the earlier episodes, like the Mare-Do-Well one, can't deny Trixie wouldn't enjoy a little acting.
Anyways, glad to see this old favourite updated, I look forward to future chapters as always.
1659675
There may be a bit of logic behind it, but not a lot. I remember making comments about pretty much all the other aspects of the challenges when they came up, but they do sort of deteriorate over time. Cliff collapse: potentially fatal. Manticore: highly dangerous. Illusions: Fairly well done, but illusions should ALWAYS leave an escape route or it'll be obvious they're not real when the characters move through them. River + sea serpent: they had to go along the bank to even reach the sea serpent, and if he hadn't been a right luvvie then they'd have been completely fine anyway. Broken bridge: please. (though the tempting trio are vaguely good, just they would have problems actually following up on their promises... not to mention how Dash could have legitimately asked how she knows they're so much better, if she's never even heard of them. A show-off like her in a secret team? Not like she'd ever get to actually DO something...)
The musical number bit was partially inspired by a fic I read (Scootamom) where Cadence is being treated for "an addiction to musical numbers". So I gave Pinkie a mild form of the same condition, and then Chrysalis spoke up... I swear, sometimes it feels more like I'm recording what the characters say than actually writing their lines.
1660055
Thanks. Writing them just flows sometimes, it's amazing. You know, everything after "Also ow." was written in a two hour burst right before submission?
And yes, there are some things in fandoms that I like to see when treated well, and when I write them I naturally tend to go for producing that. In this case, the Changeling invasion ending amicably is one of them and Twilight and Trixie being friends is another (hence, well, this fic).
The whole "awww..." was basically the funniest treatment I could think of for the abort of the invasion. Though, of course, things worked out well in the end.
I do enjoy applying logic and systematic approaches to things in many fandoms, and this is one of the times I got a chance for MLP. First off, there was what "Unicorn mages who are childhood friends" actually means, which is to say they know their magics and can make them work together as one. Second, there was the "barrier warrior" thing. I remember once shocking a friend by describing the MLP magic system in terms that would work just as well in Fate/Stay Night, and that's where the "if you can word it right, it works" comes from, along with the idea that "the pony interprets the cutie mark":
Everyone has an Origin, which is the form of their soul and their abilities. Not everyone has magic, but even a non-magic user will usually have natural talents related to their Origin. So an Origin of "hammer" could mean a blacksmith, or a builder, or a warrior who specializes in using hammers. For a mage, the Origin defines what spells they can access. An Origin of "fire" would mean that, with enough mental and magical ability, you could make spells to fly (jet propulsion), heal (burning away infection), learn fast (burning up a book to 'read' it) or simply to create temperatures hotter than a forge. Anything goes so long as it fits with the Origin somehow.
"Origin" of course refers to "cutie mark"... and since Shining's one is basically "barriers" I wondered what that could do. I had two choices - barrier around the mind to react violently if breached, or barrier across the eyes to block the hypnotic attack. I picked the second, and had Trixie make vague implication to the first as a countermeasure she has after her Discord trauma.
As for Luna... yeah. I really, really wanted her to save the day. And seeing as Luna is probably the more combative of the two sisters (she's not been around for the thousand or so peaceful years Celestia has) then arriving as a one-mare cavalry charge worked. (Plus a very subtle reference to her portfolio - meteorites and meteors are most easily seen in the night sky)
Plus, bit of a running gag: battling deities, the first thing to go is an outside wall.
One of the things I've got most progress on in the snippets is "Dragonshy". I rather imagine that both the dragon and Trixie would be shouted at.
(if you like my style of writing comedy, I have several non-MLP comedy fics on my FF.net account that you might be interested in)
I really do enjoy these stories. And the way Trixie and Twilight play off/relate to each other.
Also, the nicknames you have for them.
I hope you keep going. You only have what? 2 seasons worth to cover?
1681403
Thanks. What I was aiming for in general is for Trixie's view of Twilight to be "that insufferable know it all friend you hang out with all the time" and for Twilight's view of Trixie to be "the nutcase friend who you hear shout 'watch this!' just before they do something that alerts the police". And, because of that very irritation with one another, they're VERY close friends. Their dynamic, in fact, is modelled as much on a sibling relationship as anything. If Twilight is the "mother figure" to Spike, Trixie is the female version of the "incredibly cool uncle".
I think that the key facet of Trixie's personality, though, is that I gave her some slightly more obvious humility. And portrayed it in her being ridiculously over the top to the point of self parody. She knows full well nobody takes her seriously.
Argle. So many episodes...
The question, really, is often if I can find a good launch-pad for a parody with some endurance to it. A couple of thousand words at least. In the case of Canterlot Wedding, nothing really clicked at first - everything up to "Trixie considers this vindication!" took about a week. Then when Shining came in things clicked, and everything after that to the end was written in about two hours.
My writing is kinda like that. It has inspiration bursts.
THIS. There should be more of this!!
1681644
Hmmm.. wonder what the dynamic duo will do with the Crystal Empire. Sombra was a very boring villain so not much meat there to play with.