• Member Since 7th Feb, 2012
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Seven Fates


That girl that writes things you may or may not read. TG stuff, probably. Avatar of my batpony Evening Script by baladeAdvent.

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Source

An Asylum Tale

Broadhoof Memorial Psychiatric Hospital is a short and long-term care facility for some of Equestria's most vulnerable ponies. For them, every day is a struggle with their illnesses, be it intense bouts of depression or violent outbursts. Whatever the patient's condition, there is one thing they all hold in common. Everypony gets lonely sometimes.

For the panic-prone Lily Valley, her stay at Broadhoof marks the first Hearth's Warming without her sisters at her side. With all of the side effects of her medication, being moved to a higher security wing, and the lack of support from her family, it'll take a Hearth's Warming miracle to prevent this from being the worst Hearth's Warming ever.


Edited by Kaidan and ReFro.

Chapters (1)
Comments ( 36 )

So beautiful:fluttercry:

It was very heart touching.:fluttercry: I wish more people wrote like this. could you also please put it on my group holidays. It would be a honor to have it on my group. :twilightsmile:

Depressing, but good!

Darn.

Poor Lily.

Seriously, this got to me. Still, good job!

.........somew reason i am conflicted here. it is well written but................ the have unicorns in the building. this fire should have bee nothing. and no they would not need some kind of fire manipulation spell. they would onyl create a field of energy and push back the fire an disrupt it that way. if a field can block incoming attacks it can affect objects both physical adn energy based beyond magic.

3684365

Except maybe they don't have Unicorns with that capability? Not everyone is as good as Twilight when it comes to being a multi-generalist with high amounts of magic, maybe more down to Rarity's level when it comes to manipulation?

3684525 that is kinda why i said creating a magical field. all unicrons have that capacity, and could at least push back or isolate a fire. though admitably some may only be able to hold it longer tahn others. still, fairly certain a group of unicorns, something liekly common in the asylum, could hold back a fire if working together.

3684537

Are you talking of the magical field when they 'grab' something?

How do you 'grab' fire exactly? I mean if they had the potential to they'd just grab as much as they could and snuff it with a lack of oxygen and/or fuel, except that magical fields still let air through I believe considering what we've seen.

Hm it's a harder topic to pin down.

3684560 mainly i mean just create some kind of barrier to do so. simply release magic and hold it in plac rather than attempting to use that arcane energy as a spell. not exactly shields meant to hold back chagneling swarms but it could at least keep the fire at bay. and as i said, it would probably take a group of unicorns. that or they have a pegasus shove a raincloud into the building.

mianly trying to think of methods that would be more generally applicable than needing a pony either gifted with bringing wet and cold to manipulating fire.

3684560 hell, shoving any cloud in there would work. it is all water vapor after all.

3684634

Vapor yeah, but it's not exactly going to have the type of potential to put out an entire block fire, then there's the fact you have to get in close for it to work, along with the updrafts from the heat would mean they'd have to walk or they would be either pushed away by hot updrafts, or simply cooked by them.

3684619
Aside from Twilight and Shining, we havn't exactly seen others use barriers like that, not to mention as said before air seems to go through magical energy so it wouldn't do much to starve out to fire.

3684645 hard to say since a pegasus can literally walk on something that has no real mass to it. just giving ideas with that............ think a pegasus might actually be able to handle the updraft though. they are able to basically manipulate weather, and that means air as well........... actually i once heard a theory that part of pegasus flight was using thier wings ot manipulate air to bpush them forward. then again, it was head canon and that can vary.

i try to have a far more general sense when it comes to the powers ponies might have........... besides there is a lot of evidence to point that unicorns tend to have more than a few spells at least. i mean they actually have magic schools and spell books. why would they even exist if there was only a handful of unicorns able to use more than a select group of spells?
we have seen rarity use magic like teleportation and transmogrification. teleported a couch and shaped cloth into a simple dress. saying just because we do not see a bunch of unicorns use barriers as evidence they cannot is kinda narrow minded. its like those people who claim celestia is weak or does nothing when the fact she has kept a land full of monsters and demons afloat for a millenium is evidence that she has to have done something and is quite powerufl. just because we do not see celestia fighting rogue dragons or dealing with politics does not mean she does not fight rogue dragons and deal with politics.

3684672 I understand your concerns, believe me. Here's where the problem lies, at least in my opinion. A unicorn's magic domain lies within their special talent. Whereas a unicorn in the medical field is more likely to have more diagnostic and healing related spells in their repertoire, a unicorn in a mechanical, surgical or musical field is more likely to have spells more fine-tuned to manipulation of objects and multitasking. Aside from Twilight, Shining Armor is the only pony known to be able to cast the barrier spell. It could be a blood-line related spell, and only those who share the blood can cast it, or it could very well be that there are few outside their line with the power and mental fortitude to cast and maintain barriers.

The issue with creating a magical field to manipulate airflows is that it would logically be much more difficult to manipulate a gas, whose particles are spread out greatly, than it is to manipulate a brush or a scalpel. Even Twilight, god-tier overpowered before her alicorn ascension, exhibited issues maintaining the spell creating wind-music while simultaneously milking the cows and subduing the ursa. How much more difficult would it be for her to manipulate three air currents? How many unicorns manipulating the air currents would it take to snuff a fire? How likely would it be that a mental institution would just happen to have that many specifically disciplined unicorns on staff for such a specific emergency.

Even if Twilight's spell simply pulled air toward her by resonating with and charging the particles of the air, that sort of spell wouldn't be any better. Think about it. When you open an oven, where does that heat go? Out and up, generally into your face. Say that heated air can't go up or out. That's super heated air being channeled in your general direction, bringing the food for the fire along with it. Suddenly you might not just be pulling air your way. You're spurring the fire to keep up with its food, possibly spreading it.

As an aside, I'd like to think that a spell to manipulate gasses would be highly regulated, and any unicorn strong enough to perform it being on record. Heck, there's probably an entire register for ponies with vaguely specific skills that could be use to harm others. Just think for a second. Sure, these ponies could save lives, but who is to say they could not also take them? Compress some gas into a tiny pellet, teleport it into somepony's brain, and then release the field compressing it. That pony will be dead rather quickly.

That's just my two cents, though.

3684824 ......... if that is true then Rarity would be incapable of teleporting. nor would Lyra, who was shown teleporting in the background in a recent episode. difference between rarity in lyrai s that, apparrently at least, lyra is magically strong enough that she went to Celestia's magic school; not head canon, fact. rarity is magically strong but nor formally trained.
so likely unicorns can learn variuos spells and probably do, just some are more limited than others and more easily use spells more related to theri talents.
as i said, just cause you don't see celestia fighting dragons does not mean she doesn't, and since she kept equistrai standing and trhiving for a thousand years, she probably has.

and i was not talking about manipulating gas or suffocating the fire, i was talking about preventing its progression from spreading. just blocking or delaying the progression. Shining armor is not likely the only unicorn that can use a barier spell, but he is the only known one to be able to create one so powerful it can cover and protect a city. and more than once he is stated to be the only one able to create a shield that powerful, not the only one period.

..i was talking about pegasus manipulating air pressure and gas. cause that is technically what they do. they manipulate clouds and wind to create weather affects.

3684970 The problem with what you were suggesting with the barrier spell is that it still lets gases and fluids through. Think about it. Twilight sealed herself and the library inside a barrier when the Cutie Mark Crusaders were using the pen name Gabby Gums, and again when Shining Armor protected all of Canterlot. You can argue 'trees' all you want, but how much air can a magically preserved library tree really provide? Likewise, Canterlot as mostly gardens. No forests. Shrubs wouldn't be able to sustain an entire city. If you can't stop the air from getting through, there's no reason to expect to block superheated air from blasting through the barrier, or heat spreading through materials overlapped by the barrier. Even if the flames themselves don't spread directly, new combustion can occur if things become hot enough.

I never directly stated that ponies would't have access to spells not pertaining to their special talents. What I said was that they had magic domains. It goes to logic that any spell outside their domain would be particularly difficult or straining for them. The 'teleportation' for example, is likely a spell all unicorns possess, but not as many train themselves to be able to use it regularly like Twilight does. Conjuring up objects would be a subset of that spell, and no less useful to somepony who cannot afford to divide their attention from what they are doing to float it all the way with levitation. Time can be a big factor in those choices.

I honestly don't know WHY you keep bringing up Celestia, either. You've made that point once already, but to keep circling back to that just seems like a circular 'but if this happened, then your argument must be invalid' bit of logic.

As for pegasi, jamming a rain cloud into a burning building might not be the best of plans either. What happens when water particles become super heated? You get steam. Steam is every bit as dangerous to a pony as fire is. As for their manipulation of the weather, the only thing we truly see them doing is producing, manipulating, and dispersing clouds. When they are dealing with storm clouds, they are only exciting the water particles inside the cloud to produce a static charge, not actually creating the lightning themselves. It seems unlikely that they would directly affect air currents. Instead, they likely use their manipulation of water [clouds] to manipulate the air, by placing clouds to create eddies in the naturally occurring air currents. With that logic in mind, the only way pegasi can reasonable put out fires is to drain rainclouds on them. A regular fire brigade seems more reasonable in this aspect.

3685083 was using the celsetia thing as an emphasis. just because it is not directly shown does not mean it does not exist as a a likelyhood.

jsut giving ideas here. and i am not talking about smothering it, as i said. while nothing we have in existence could confirm it, a barrior could prevent the fire from spreading to other combustible substances and isolate the fire, trapping the heat and energy. would not possoibly stop the gas and ash, but it could block the heat and combustion cycle.
and with clouds, i did not mean to ltierally just shove cloud into it. get enough cloud that it starts to cool or smother the fire. if they can use it to stand on they could possibly use it to also shield themselves as they do that. hwatever they do that allows them to shape cloud to begin with would probably allow the evaporation to be progressive rather than isntantenous. so perhaps like melting ice.

I kinda of surprised that they haven't developed some sort of fire door system to help contain the fire.

Aw damn...that's just sad...

Crying...
Rose better not get pregnant.

Wait... Did Lily die?
...oh god please no... :raritycry:

Nurse Ratchet

What you did.
It's there.
And I see it.

4999007 What is it that you think I did?

5000575 A nice little reference to One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. My apologies for not being clear enough.

5003287 Never read it, unfortunately. Being based in the universe of Daemon of Decay's Asylum, I made certain references to his story, in this case the character Nurse Ratchet. If DoD made that reference in Asylum, then the 'reference' is an unintentional one on my part. :raritywink:

5003490 Yours is the first Asylum-verse story I've really delved into (and a very good one it is), so I'll have to check in on that. The book One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest does have a Nurse Ratchet who rules the mental institution through manipulation and intimidation and the patients are reluctant to get on her bad side.

Comment posted by Snickerdoodle deleted Oct 25th, 2014

wow... The... This gave me the f:raritycry:king feels... Gj!!

hyperpolactinemia

hyperprolactinemia missing an 'r'
Not surprised it took so long for this to be pointed out, what kind of person Googles ever new word they find? Oh wait...

7551162 Yeah, and the thing is for the longest time, I thought the r was there. Of course, when the in-browser dictionary doesn't recognize the word because it's not a common-use English term, but rather a medical term, I suppose it's not surprising.

Sonofabitch, I just finished after a quick break to eat. Well that was sad.

This was really well done. Lily's stream of consciousness ebbs cleanly between frenzied and passive, and it's never difficult to follow when or why her thoughts have shifted. It's great to see the complexities of mental illness written in a way that's both accurate and engaging.

9376998 Thanks. It means a lot to me.
Regarding the accuracy and the transition of thoughts, I suppose it is, and has always been, easier to write from the mindset of someone bearing mental infirmity when they themselves aren’t in an amazing place. I’m not well, and I have not been for a long time. Stories like this, and events in other stories I’ve written, have been my own way of subconsciously dealing with my own problems without seeking help. Between beginning my transition from male to female in 2016 and getting the clinic docs to try me on antidepressants, I’m doing better than I was, but I know I’ve got a long way to go.

Hey I was wondering if you’d be okay if I did a reading of this? I probably won’t be able to do it for this year but I am interested in doing it for next year.

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