Rainbow Dash here. Fastest pony alive, hero of Equestria, most loyal of friends? You've heard of me. Anyway, Cheerilee and Twilight are kinda ticked off at me today, but I talked them into listening to a story that'll make them think twice. It's all about my Best Day Ever. Not the Best Young Flier competition, after that. This is the story of how me and the Wonderbolts got tangled up with some pirate jerks who were trying to steal Princess Celestia, and then how I almost singlehoofedly blew up the Everfree Forest.
No, really. When your life's as awesome as mine is, you don't need to make things up.
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A somewhat aged tale, conceived in the olden days when season one hadn't quite wrapped up yet as a response to all the mopey "Dash breaks a wing" fics that were all the rage at the time, and actually finished about a year later. Enjoy, and don't mind the embarrassing pop culture jokes or the rough spots where canon's been throwing rocks at it and leaving pockmarks.
Special thanks to Ion-Sturm, without whom this fic would have significantly fewer commas and satisfying endings.
>read first two chapters
This is great! I can't wait to read the third!
>click on '3'
>the site tips over
GOD
DAMNIT
(I'll read it later, I promise!)
Unique idea and I like it
Edit: If you saw a line that looked like a reference to something else, chances are that it was. There's a blog post up that goes over all of the ones I can remember making, and which also explains a certain Wonderbolt's character design. I'm particularly fond of the shoutout to Gilbert & Sullivan.
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I hate it when that happens, as though you're reading a real page-turner of a book and suddenly the last third turns out to be blank. I would've posted the whole thing as a single segment, the way it was written, if not for a few people advising me to break it up to mitigate the TL;DR effect.
(Quite enjoyed The Moony Maiden, incidentally. I've got my own idea about Luna and books that might be the next thing I get around to writing up.)
But what about the inferno spiders?!
WHERE ARE MY INFERNO SPIDERS
But, really, that was great! I don't usually like big action fics like this, but Rainbow's way of telling the story was great. The big sections in parentheses were a bit weird, though; I guess they were your way of doing exposition? The info in them was pretty useless, though. I would have, at the very least, made them shorter.
TAKE MY THUMB!
also, submit this to EqD!
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>The big sections in parentheses were a bit weird, though; I guess they were your way of doing exposition? The info in them was pretty useless, though. I would have, at the very least, made them shorter.
The GDocs version moves these to footnotes at the bottom of the relevant page, which is the primary reason I suggest reading it there. Can't do that here on FimFic. They're not meant to be relevant to anything in particular, just silly worldbuilding bits to keep the mood fairly light. Probably won't do it again, though. (edit: To be accurate, they've since been removed from this version entirely.)
>also, submit this to EqD!
Sitting in the prereader queue, last I heard.
>TAKE MY THUMB!
Glad you enjoyed it!
gotta go to work but will be spending my entire night reading this. may print it out and take it with me to work.... hmm.... now theres a thought... read it old school egghead style... Twilight would be so proud.
Sounds interesting to say the least, so I'll give it a look later when I can.
INFERNO SPIDERS!!!!!! WOO HOO!! Great job on this! You nailed her personality pretty well
Oh, hey Scizor. You do seem to get around.
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There's a name I haven't seen in a while. I suppose we both thrive on colorful, comedic, adventure-y franchises.
Twilight: Airships aren't real!
*meanwhile, Rarity is christening one as it sets sail out of canterlot*
This was great. I smiled the entire time I read it. I really like how you ended it off with us not being sure if/how much of it was made up.
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If there is a moral to the story, it's that you shouldn't write fanfics at a glacial pace over the course of ten months. The show ended up beating me to the punch on some of my jokes, never mind all the writing around canon I had to do. Suffice it to say that the story is set at the time it is for a couple of reasons, Sweet and Elite's airship scene among them. Equestria's technology caught up in a matter of months once a certain interested pegasus threw a lot of money at the problem.
This story is epic!!! Rainbow Dash rocks!! The Wonderbolts are really interesting characters and I like how you played with them not being all together happy with their 'other' job as monster/bad guy hunters. It adds a lot of depth.
So this story gets a A+++
Brilliant! Absolutely brilliant!
Favourite? I think so!
There are no words for how good this is. I'm sitting here trying to think of something better to say, but my mind feels like it was just blown to jelly.
Just take my thumbs.
I cracked up at 'Captain Stirrup'
Play Wario Land much, do we? XD Some of the best classic Gameboy/Gameboy Color games EVER.
Hmmm.... Wonder if it's true, Yes. Wondering about Stirrup, Yes.
_________________________________________________________________________________ Captain Stirrup laid injured among the wreckage of her airship. Stupid Wonderbolts.... she thought. She had heavy burns all over her, as far as she could tell.
_________________________________________________________________________________And that's all I could think of. THIS WAS AWESOME.
Rainbow Dash might be lying about her stories?! NOW I'M PISSED!
A bell, a book, and a candle? Why does that sound familiar?
Glad I finally found the time to read this, as it was an unadulterated pleasure.
First, the boring parts. Mechanically, I only noticed two errors in 30K words. No mean feat, that. If you care, the first is in chapter 2:
“And you’re gonna tell it to me later, but okay.” Dashed dropped back to the ground.
And the second was a comma splice in chapter 3 that I should have noted at the time, as now I can't find it without a full re-read. Hardly a big deal.
So! I loved this story--it had me grinning almost the entire time, and after reading your blog post (or at least parts of it), I feel I need to go buy some Discworld books and give them a read. I've always heard good things about the series, but never found a good reason to pursue it. Funny what ponies will do to you.
Also wondering if the kobolds say that ponies no take candle. If that reference doesn't mean anything to you, then you've lived a better life than me.
The framing device was great for this--Rainbow Dash didn't come off as a simplistic moron or overly arrogant (which is always a really tough line to walk, and one reason why I try not to write her into anything if I can help it), and managed to keep pace with the story and action perfectly, while giving us the focused POV that really helped her descriptions of events shine.
It's a travesty that this fic isn't more well-known, and that it has the rating it does on EQD. For what it's worth, this is easily in the top tier of fics for quality and entertainment, in my opinion, and it's been an absolute joy to read.
Comments!
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You bet. Her design's more than a little based on Syrup's, too.
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Bell, book, and candle is derived from an old Catholic excommunication rite, and has since found its way into various aspect of pop culture. The blog post goes into a little more detail.
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>Dashed
Augh. Yes, I care very much, thank you. A fair amount of the character movements were added in the final edit pass, and consequently weren't re-read a dozen times over like much of the rest of the writing.
>I feel I need to go buy Discworld and give it a read. I've always heard good things about it, but never found a good reason to purchase it. Funny what ponies will do to you.
Run, don't walk, and do this immediately. It's a wonderful series. This story's overall tone and style owes a lot to it, only Terry Pratchett is much better at it.
>Also wondering if the kobolds say that ponies no take candle. If that reference doesn't mean anything to you, then you've lived a better life than me.
This is brought up near the end of the blog post, but yes. As I type this, I'm up well past my bedtime waiting for the Mists NDA to break.
>For what it's worth, this is easily in the top tier of fics for quality and entertainment, in my opinion, and it's been an absolute joy to read.
I'm still not quite sure how to react to high praise like this ("People really like it that much? Wow."), and it's not just the first fic willies. The amount of planning I put into this before I started writing it consisted of around four major ideas and plot points and nothing else. In particular, the Wonderbolts were made up on the fly when I got down to the point where they needed to be introduced, and then heavily rewritten later on when they went and developed personalities and motivations when I wasn't looking. The entire final scene didn't even exist until my /fic/ prereader complained, rightfully so, that it ended on a terrible note. In short, so much of the logical flow of the story was revised over time that I've never been quite certain that it's completely coherent to anyone but myself (e.g. did any of the hints that Dash was going through a disguised and somewhat ineptly handled trial by fire come across? Did Nimbus' reasons for disliking Dash make sense, given how that entire plot thread was retrofitted into the rest of the fic?)
But I suppose it came together in the end, and I'm just worrying too much.
I am not above suggesting that you mention how great you think it is to all your friends and associates, however.
Thanks for the feedback, everyone. There may yet be more where this came from.
why does the troll remind me of the ones from the game Fable, the earth trolls.
Excellent story. My 3rd favorite RD fic.
I really enjoyed this story. Thank you for taking the time to write it.
You used "germane" properly in a sentence. If I hadn't already been planning to read this, I would be doing so now.
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Because reasons.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell,_book,_and_candle
This is getting more and more fun with each line.
One of the better stories I've read, in terms of capturing RD's voice. The tone set throughout was pleasant and breezy, yet did nothing to detract from the more dramatic moments. All in all, this was a real pleasure to read. Thanks for sharing.
This is just fantastic!
That was a really entertaining story.
Hmm, yes, I suppose oaks don't have the same level of will to live that redwoods have, do they. I guess it is impressive when an oak overcomes its racial disabilities with living while hollow.
I can't imagine why anybody would choose to read without the footnotes.
Spike, please volunteer information like this as much as possible.
Might be related to how you pulled off a trick that isn't supposed to be physically possible, not to mention saved several Wonderbolts, in front of quite a lot of ponies, and if you decided you didn't want to be a 'Bolt and would prefer to, say, use the attention you thus garnered to launch a solo performing career, it would be a PR disaster and he would probably be blamed.
Which would probably constitute a stressful day, I agree.
Figuring out the speed of dark? Why's that on her long-term to-do list? Everybody knows it's c+1 (regardless of which units you use).
I can see that this is a true story. If Dash were lying, losing all those fights is the first thing she'd change.
Like when they weren't the first response team to giant Spike?
Like Blueblood's sky yacht that Rarity's never seen? The one that, if it did exist, would have been developed in complete secrecy because nopony ever would care to know what one of the most influential ponies in Canterlot is doing?
Speaking of, when is this set, anyway? The normal assumption of indeterminately more or less the present relative to where I see it in the EqD fiction archives just doesn't seem to be working out . . .
Ah. Thank you.
Would I be correct in assuming you are a Pratchett fan? That variety of troll seems pretty familiar.
In which case we get a pretty good idea of the temperature in that cave by how Basalt can recognize the word "territory" but not say it.
Or possibly just greedy, depending on the specifics of gemstone frequencies in Equestria. I don't think I've seen any gems that are transparent, as a pure diamond would be, in which case diamonds could well be quite valuable. That'd be a strong motivation to kick a troll's teeth out, if you thought you could.
EDIT: On a hunch, I checked some images from Dragonshy, and one of the pieces of jewelery Rarity tries to steal from the dragon appears to have a giant diamond on it. And there's some gems that look like diamond in Dog and Pony Show. And Apple Bloom says "I'm running out of ways to make diamonds sound bad." And she seems to be including a lot of colored gems in that set, and diamonds can be colored by various trace impurities. So I don't know what I was thinking.
Smart, Dash. Kick the guy who's got to outweigh you by an order of magnitude at least, and is made of rock.
Well somebody doesn't have any weather control experience. Or concept of conservation of energy.
The light fantastic? Octarine light is more what I'd expect here, but that doesn't really fit the description.
Where's the inferno spiders?
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Ooh, a reader. And live comment notifications. Things have changed while I've been gone.
Let's see here...
I'm fond of them, but as multiple early readers pointed out, less fond of how they interrupted the flow of the writing around them as the parentheticals they originally were. Digital footnoting is such a bother.
I rewrote that joke a good half-dozen times and never did end up being quite satisfied with it, but it's the one everybody loves, so what do I know about being funny anyway.
Specifically, the rough outline was written circa A Bird in the Hoof. Turning that from "Rainbow Dash shows the Wonderbolts some tricks but something fishy happens" into readable prose happened in fitful spurts over the course of the following year, during which the last few episodes of season one and all of season two happily paved over some of the holes in continuity I was exploiting and I gave up and made it a period piece.
Yes, quite. An earlier draft actually had the temperature bit worked in too, before a moment of clarity struck and I thought better of committing complete creative plagiarism. There's still shades of it there, in retrospect, but not intentionally so.
It also took a while to find a kind of mineral he hadn't already used.
Nothing in particular. The Everfree's just a really weird place, and it doesn't like people.
So WAS she telling the truth???
Or was she telling the truth but over exaggerating?
>Until FiMFiction gets around to implementing some sort of footnote equivalent,
They have...
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Oh? Well then. I can't say I check site news much, so feature updates tend to slip right on by.