Humans called it "the most painful thing known to medical science." Most ponies don't even know the condition exists because only humans are affected by it, and humans are either myth or long extinct.
However, a certain clan of Thestrals called the Vein clan know a lot more about the horrible condition the humans call "Cluster Headache" than they'd like to.
At first glance, the Veins appear to be an incredibly blessed family. About one in every three foals born to the clan has a horn and Earth Pony-like strength in addition to the bat wings that set the Thestrals apart from the other ponies. However, the "Thestricorns" in the family aren't nearly as privileged as most ponies think: Thestricorn members of the clan are born with a terrible curse, and when one is born, the parents grieve for the suffering their poor foal will have to endure their entire life.
(This fic is a tribute to anyone who has had to live with Cluster Headaches. As someone who suffers from them myself, I know full well how you feel, and my heart goes out to you.)
Not to shaby my dear pony.
3932582 Why, thank you!
Looked up the condition on Wikipedia. Goddamn.
The story is great.
I have never heard of cluster headaches myself but I can only asume that little can be par on the level of pain a cluster headache can bring.
Hope you have pain free dreams.
3951754 Thanks!
And yeah, Clusters are right up there with kidney stones and childbirth without painkillers in how much they hurt. On the official scale, those three are the only things ranked as ten out of ten, but Clusters are the only thing that patients regularly claim are off the scale when asked to rate the pain from zero to ten. A lot of patients rate them around fifteen out of ten or some other ridiculously off the scale number.
Shoot. Chapter 6 suddenly went blank due to technical difficulties. I'll try to get it back up. Please check back later.
Chapter's back up! Yay! Sorry about that!
No problem any time.
3952142 No prob. This chapter was very nice indeed.
I am really enjoying this. Keep it coming!
Hey Citadel.
Found you.
4427253 Sorry, I don't have an alt. This is my original and only account. Citadel is another person. Whoever told you we were one and the same needs to get their thoughts straightened out. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm trying to overcome writer's block, here. I have a small but important (to me) fan base to bring updates to.
Now, I'll give you one chance to just leave quietly. You bring your friends, and I'll do something Citadel never would: I'll report harassment to the mods. I'm a little known author with a backwater account who is undeserving of a mob coming after me on an unprovable presumption. You have no evidence to back up your claim, and if you come after me just because you think I'm him, I'll report you. You have no evidence that we are one and the same, so don't act like you do. We're cousins. That's why I know so much about him. We're related? Yes. Same person? No. I'm not Citadel. And cousins live in the same town all the time, just like we do. I'm appalled that you never thought to ask if we were related before you assumed we were the same guy.
4428541 Cry more.
4706562 I get it. You're trying to goad me. Well, it won't work. I'm not as fragile-minded as Citadel. You're just here to downvote bomb, and I'm going to ignore two of the downvotes, since two of you guys commented here and then obviously downvoted. To me, this story has 10 downvotes, not 12. Your opinion doesn't matter to me. So, I bid you good day.
4760717 Cry more.
4760717
4761731 4761752 I'm not gonna cry. You know why? Because you're nothing to me. I don't give a darn about the opinions of people who came to this story just to downvote bomb just because the story is about Cluster Headaches. I saw the big argument on Citadel's original attempt at a story, and you guys lashed out at him in part because of the Cluster Headache thing. Well, unless you can give me evidence that you downvoted for some reason other than being prejudiced against disabled people (CH is recognized as a physical disability by many governments), I'm going to ignore you and all of your biased friends, since you are clearly persecuting disabled people here.
Good day. If you just say the same comment a fourth time, I'll report you for spamming. Say something different and worthwhile, or just go bother someone else.
4761731
4761752
Enjoy your reports you filthy plebs. You couldn't possibly comprehend the amount of euphoria I felt when Dolphy triumphantly told Sigma and his group of Nazis that he was going to stand stalwart against them.
Don't even bother replying because I've already alerted the cyber police and they will backtrace as much evidence as they can to put you in jail!
Dolphy will rise like the phoenix above all haters and in that one, GLORIOUS day, we will all tip our hats to him.
PS. Dolphy doesn't need to cry cuz I'm doing it for it him
4761759
( ͡ ͡º ͜▪ ͡ ͡º)/ 卐
4761759
4761776
shit i dun goofed
4761795 Also, you know your precious little Skype group you use to rally people to downvote bomb and harass people? One of your members has reported to me from time to time. Not recently, but I know what you use that Skype group for. I've mentioned your little harassment group to the mods in my report, and you'll most likely have to answer to them about it.
4761847
I love how you think I'm some kind of troll godfather or something.
And that you think this downvoting is organized hate rather than just a lot of people who feel that your stories are shit.
4761893 IT'S ME, LOUEY.
I'M DA RAT, AND I'MA HAF TA CAP YA. NO HARD FEELINGS, CAPICHE?
4761847
>One of your members has reported to me from time to time
>reported to me
>top kek
4761893 I won't deign to speak with you anymore. Once this is over, I'm blocking you. There's no alternate solution to this problem. I hope you and the entire "house" get what's coming to you. If this doesn't end here, I'm going to report your Skype group on Skype itself. You will never hurt another author for your own selfish ends ever again. This. Ends. Now. Good bye and good riddance. Don't bother commenting, because I'll just ignore it.
4761911 Auf wiedersehen
4761911
I'm really confused as to what I did to make you hate me so much. xD
4761919
You said words
English words most likely, possibly secret jew codes I can't be sure.
4761911 Blocking sounds like a good idea. That's typically the best way to handle people who are posting stuff you'd rather not see. As seems to be the case here.
If you've got evidence of organized vote abuse, then that's another matter, but I can't take a claim like that on your word alone. I'd be happy to investigate your claim if there's actual facts to back it up, of course, but you really do need to give that to me before I can do anything.
Otherwise the best thing you can do in this situation is use the block button.
4762005 If you contact me on skype, I'll start a joint conversation between the three of us. I promised to keep their identity a secret, so I'll need to make this a private conversation.
4762027 Can you just send me Skype logs or something?
I mean, realistically, there's very little I'm going to be able to do here. Skype is not Fimfiction and has no affiliation with Fimfiction, so I can't really penalize people for talking bad about your story there. I certainly can't directly penalize the Skype group itself, obviously, either. So my power here is quite limited.
If there are logs of people saying "let's all go downvote this now!", then I can compare vote history to chat participants and maybe warn some people not to do it in the future. But that's about all I can do, because it's almost impossible to disprove a claim of "I saw the link in the chat, read it for myself, and decided I didn't like it."
I'm willing to do that for you if you want, but you have made some rather outrageous claims about how righteous moderator justice is going to rain down from the heavens now that you've filed a report, and, well... that's quite an overstatement of what's going to actually happen if you choose to pursue this.
If it were me, I'd just ignore it and move on with my life.
4762050 I'll try to get you the logs. Remember, I'm not a member of that group. This informant is. This may take a few days to take care of, since they're currently unable to access the history of that group due to them not being on the right computer for it. I'll try to get them to you as soon as I can, though.
Huh
i cant tell whether this is a Citadel alt or someone taking the piss out of him
4785160
No it's his cousin who might actually be Citadel as he admitted on the last story that that was a group account and sometimes he posts as Dolphy and sometimes he posts as Citadel. But to avoid confusion they're going to be signing their names to their posts so we all know which of his personalities we're talking to at any one time.
I see you've tagged this story with the Tragedy and Dark tags.
Unless you consider getting Clusters a "dark" theme, I don't see much Dark happening. I suppose it could come up later in the story, so I won't push the issue further at the moment.
However, the Tragedy tag I'm extremely skeptical about. You do realize that for this to be a tragedy the ending has to have the MC loose despite all his efforts, right? Because otherwise it's not a tragedy. And from what I've observed of your O
POC, that's gonna be close to impossible since he can practically cast any "fix it" spell to keep anything normal life things from happening to him (like accidentally leaving ones food to spoil. You don't even let him eat a stale muffin without him pulling a spell out of nowhere to make it all better). Unless of course, you consider your character still having Clusters at the end of all this a "tragedy".4962494 Okay, I get the point. I guess the tragedy tag will have to be removed. But the story will get darker. I'm getting close to when the really dark stuff happens. Everything so far has pretty much been "the calm before the storm", so to speak. I also intend to prove that Dye's magic is more on par with a slightly above-average unicorn, not an ascended Alicorn. His family just has a wide array of spells that they know. I like to give my OCs a streak of luck first (well, some of them, at least. Dye is one of them). Luck pretty much always runs out. He'll be forced into difficult situations soon enough.
4761759 people were not hating for cluster headaches. We were hating for citadel's not so secret homophobia. I have no problem with either hating or loving, and I only love authors who care enough about their followers to say the truth. I don't hate you. I just want you to move on from your disrespect for readers. Because no matter how little you cry on the outside, you are screaming inside. You need to start caring, to start earning your followers by writing. You are already on the right path.