I'm a long time science fiction and animation fan who stumbled into My Little Pony fandom and got caught -- I guess I'm a Brony Forever now.
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This story is a sequel to Nightmares Are Tragic
The story of Pinkie Pie's origin, the days that changed her life forever, and what she did about it. Explores her motivations and decision-making processes, and what she uses instead of mere mundane logic to achieve her unusual ends.
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Interesting--and of course a part of your fictional framework I have particularly wanted to read.
Identifying the higher bodies of the Royal Sisters as you did makes me wonder two things:
*Have you read Days of Wasp and Spider?
*What of their other siblings, Electromagnetism and Radioactivity? (Or Fission, or whatever you're calling her.)
In any case, eagerly looking forward to more. I love explorations into the nature of Pinkie, and I'm sure this one's going to be a doozy.
I love this story, it's interesting. Flaffy is so cute
4337873
Fusion is actually both the nuclear forces, Strong and Weak. Electromagnetism is shared by both Sisters.
Oh, MAN.
Y'know, when I opened this chapter, I was thinking, " . . . tentacles?"
I had no idea where this was coming from, because I hadn't read all your other fics yet (I've read some of the Luna ones) and I was sort of confused.
By the middle, you had reduced me to tears. Oh, MAN.
Because while I underplay it like crazy, because I write light romantic comedy, I always have it in the back of my mind that this is what Cheese Sandwich sees when he looks at her. And he simply cannot understand why everypony else doesn't see it, too. Are they blind and deaf, or what? (EDIT: by the way, he's entirely right. He's not some dolt blinded by romantic love.) It's not exactly the same--for me, it's based on Party Pony Magic--but it is a big, huge, huge deal. It's a kind of Earth Pony magic, and without Equestria's handful of Party Ponies, Laughter dies out of the world. And Pinkie herself--well, she's a genius of Party Pony-ness, the omphalos, the Great She--and this is why he does not simply grab her and kiss her as though she were a regular pony. I mean, that would be rude anyway, but She is something entirely different. It's not completely surprising that he sees this in her. His magic is born out of hers.
And this makes things very confusing for him. It's hard to tell where one kind of love and recognition ends and another begins, and on one level, it is just unfathomable that she might choose him for anything as mundane as her romantic partner, but he can't help wanting that, as well. Does that make sense?
Anyhoo, not derailing onto my stuff--it's just that you NAILED something I was thinking for a while.
so pinkie is immortal?
4343464
Claire gets mentioned in An Extended Performance and is the main character of Least Noticeable and Little Flappy. She's physically a Ponified version of Wilbur Whateley's Twin from The Dunwich Horror by H. P. Lovecraft; and emotionally an Ingenue from an Edwardian to Jazz Age romance novel. She's very sweet and innocent, and never entirely loses her sweetness even after she becomes the matriarch of her own very large (and very strange) outgrowth of the Pie Family.
Later on, in Twelfth Equestriad Interview, it is more or less stated that her Gate ability, marketed by The Pie Sisters, Inc. (run by Limestone "Blinkie" and Marble "Inkie" Pie); has become the backbone of the Equestrian economic expansion to other worlds, because Claire can with the expenditure of protracted time and energy make permanent interplanetary Gates that the Equestrians run railroads through. Inkie and Blinkie are full sisters, the daughters of Cloudy Quartz and her husband Igneous Rock, half-sisters to Maud, Claire and Pinkie, and while they are also very nice mares, they are a bit more hard-edged, mercenary and businesslike than are their Paradise-sired elder sisters. (Maud is tough and sharp enough, but can't sustain any interest for very long that doesn't involve either geology or a loved one).
(will respond to the rest of your very lovely and appreciated comment later ...)
I am loving this story. The pseudo religious like references that the Paradise exerts on the story make it a very interesting premise. We know there are big things ahead for the Pies and yet this chapter shows that everything that they do that we know are nothing compared to what is going to come.
Is Paradise supposed to be always in italics? Because the para that starts "as for the elder twin" isn't.
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Which segment in particular? The one where Cloudy goes from regarding Claire as monstrous to seeing her as her own adorable little foal? Or the one where Pinkie is being born and Goldie realizes that she is -- basically -- her faith's version of the Messiah?
Oh, I agree with you, and not entirely because of the specific role Pinkie plays in the larger context of my verse. In canon, Pinkie is clearly a very special Pony -- all of the Mane Six are, really, but Pinkie has essentially the mission of bringing joy and laughter and love to everypony through her parties. She is greater and nobler than most Ponies, as is each of the Mane Six in her own way, and she is extremely admirable.
I've noticed that there are two general (and opposing) tendencies expressed by authors writing about Equestria in general, and the Mane Six in particular. The first is admiration at the beauty and virtues of such a society and its champions, attempting to elevate them further by exploring the full implications of their awesomeness. The second is resentment at what is assumed to be hidden ugliness and hypocritical vice hiding beneath the mask of virute, attempting to degrade the characters by making them mean and petty and false.
As you may have noticed, I'm firmly in the camp of elevation. Yes, Equestria is not a perfect society, nor are the Mane Six perfect ponies in every respect. Yes, they have vices, and sometimes do things which are not entirely heroic. But, by and large, Equestria is a good and noble civilization, and the Mane Six are good and noble Ponies. It requires some fairly serious twisting from canon in order to turn Equestria into a cruel culture and its champions into false heroes.
Where Pinkie is concerned, there is a tendency for those practicing the second approach to assume that "party pony" means that she is insanely promiscuous, and that her manic good cheer means that she is not very bright. While the first is not directly contradicted by canon (because canon doesn't dare go there) it is strongly implied that this is not the case because at no point does she display the G-rated aspects of such behavior which could be shown on screen -- her parties seem rather innocent affairs, at least in terms of Pinkie's contributions to them.
If she was promiscuous, it would have to be in an utterly-benevolent and innocent Free Love manner, and there is no sign even of this. Pinkie is simply not a scheming seductress -- the required mindset is close to 180 degrees from her own, which is childlike -- a point which I had Paradise state explicitly and which is also stated rather explicitly in the show. Pinkie is very likely to futher mature over her lifetime, but she is very unlikely to become evil.
And yes, Cheese Sandwich very obviously even in canon deeply and profoundly respects her. She showed him that the world could be happy and beautiful, and that he himself could find a place in society bringing joy and laughter to others. I would wager that he is grateful to her, is in serious awe of her, and probably thinks of her as being in some ways a higher being than himself. The fact that she now respects him back must make him tremendously happy and proud.
Part of this profound respect is that, even if he loves her romantically (and the episode in canon implies that he may), this love is tinged with extreme admiration and respect. So, yes.
Oh, tremendously so. She, in turn, seemed by the end of "Pinkie Pride" to just be coming to the realization that -- for the first time in her life -- she's found someone who is enough like her to understand her, to be a true soul mate. Pinkie is in her early 20's (in my timeline, around 23 by now) and even though childlike in many ways, she's starting to mature to the point that she may be thinking about finding somepony to be her potential life-mate (which is to say, she's reaching a point that most ponies probably attain in their teens -- but then she's highly-neotenous, as I have Paradise directly state.
Given what we've seen so far in the show, Cheese Sandwich is, in fact, a very likely candidate for her future husband. After all, she knows a heck of a lot of Ponies, but I don't think she's ever met anypony at all like him. Which is to say, rather like herself.
4343800
Well, yes, if she Ascends.
4346612 Mostly the second, although the first was sweet once I understood what was going on. I don't read Lovecraft and things like that, so I was thrown for a loop.
One thing I particularly like about Pinkie is the way in which she represents Mirth, or Comedy, or the Wisdom of Folly. It's an underrated virtue, maybe more so even than Kindness. Sometimes I'm thrown a curveball on the show, as when she performs a Wonderbolts rap, and then I just remember that this is Pinkie we're talking about. My particular read on Cheese Sandwich is that he would immediately think, "well, yes. That was the obvious thing to do." He wouldn't understand it 100% of the time, of course, but he would most of the time, and he'd take the other fraction on faith.
I'm not so keen on dark readings of Equestria. I can see its purpose sometimes, as an AU illustration of what they don't have, but mostly, I don't see the point.
As for Pinkie's parties getting all orgiastic: this is the pony who was accused of planning a wedding as though it were a six year old's birthday party, to which her response was a sincere, broken "thank you." Not a bad model, if you ask me. Cheese's edge more towards a grown up or a teenaged model, but we're still talking about cake and streamers. It's much more "something for all ages," and not at all "21+ only."
As Big MacIntosh says, "ee-yup."
If you'd asked me the week before Pinkie Pride aired whether I thought there should even be a hint of romance in MLP, I would have said, "good golly, no! There's plenty of it everywhere else." I certainly would have scoffed at the idea of my supporting a Pinkie Pie ship. I could have gone on happily not shipping any of the characters at all. There was something about this concept and this episode that completely turned my thinking around. I think the admiration and respect is a big part of it, and another component is his explicit statement that she gave him something wonderful and life-changing without even noticing it. And as much as he is in awe of that (and yes, I think he acknowledges her as his superior, or at least that he would not exist in his current form without her), that actually is enough. She doesn't have to "love him back." All he wants to do is to demonstrate that: "this is the gift you gave me: I have made good use of it."
And then things temporarily reel out of control, as they will among young creatures, and particularly (and I hope this doesn't sound sexist) among young masculine creatures, who can sometimes do some rather silly things in pursuit of admiration. One thinks of peacocks. But I don't think of that as a vice. It's just normal. And upstaging is what he does for a living. Among ponies, what you do is deeply tied to who you are. The end involves both of them acknowledging the ways in which they blew it, moving beyond that, and joining forces.
That's pretty awesome even without romantic love whipped into the mix. Or, as you might say, admirable.
I don't usually become interested in "ships" unless I think there's some kind of realistic basis for it. So for me as a writer, it's a chance to explore some mystic elements that go beyond love-marriage-baby carriage, not that there's anything wrong with that. But, naturally, retaining the comic elements. I'm still writing light comedy, but it's a pleasure to see the more esoteric angle!
Oh yes. Her virtue is the Element hardest to analogize to the Medieval Scholastic Seven, but it's one the Medievals recognized in practice, as witness the strange social position of jesters. Pinkie's virtue strikes through pretension (which is why she can dispel illusion) and restores good cheer -- it is inimical to fear.
Cheese Sandwich is in a very real sense Pinkie's disciple. Which, given the romantic attraction between them, would make him her equivalent of Mary Magdalene. If that's not too serious (and to some blasphemous) a comparison. Though it's not a perfect analogy, either, in part because Pinkie's message is a bit different.
I don't think that Equestria is a perfect society -- I think that there are dark ponies and dark currents here and there -- but I do think that it is, overall, a pretty good society. Probably their equivalent of what the best cultures of the West are to Humans, and then the Ponies tend to be a bit nicer than Humans, by and large.
I think there are some ways Equestria could be better. I think there are a lot more ways it could be worse. By and large, while I don't think that Celestia's regime or her servants are perfect, I think they are on the whole benevolent, honest and in most ways fairly competent.
Yes. One has to seriously distort Pinkie's character as shown on the series in order to see her as a promulgator of drunken debauchery. Yeah, some alcoholic beverages flow at some of her parties, and yes, I'm sure someponies sometimes have sex at (or more precisely near) them, because she throws big parties, but liquor and random sex just isn't what she's about. What she's about is spreading the innocent joy of childhood, and showing adults that they can still experience this.
And that's what Cheese found and finds special about her. Which is not to say that they can't lust after each other as well, because that's part of love too, but to assume that Pinkie's main focus in life is "sex" misreads her. Rather obviously, as a charismatic traveling pony, Cheese has probably had plenty of merely sexual opportunities -- that's not what he finds special about Pinkie Pie.
There was something about this concept and this episode that completely turned my thinking around. I think the admiration and respect is a big part of it, and another component is his explicit statement that she gave him something wonderful and life-changing without even noticing it.
Both agape and caritas are big parts of Pinkie's nature. It's actually characteristic of her to give off so much love that she could turn around somepony else's life without even trying all that hard.
Cheese is an expression of the same spirit as Pinkie Pie in masculine form. Which makes him very special and important in my verse, because Paradise only sires Daughters. Cheese is proof that the joy that produced Paradise in the alternate world isn't dead in this world; that Paradise and that which it creates can inspire creatures wholly of the main world to return the sentiment and radiate it themselves. Or in other words "Paradise is Spreading."
And I actually do think that Pinkie was beginning to love him back, and not just in terms of her usual expression of diffuse love for all Ponykind. I think that Cheese was starting to awaken her capacity for romantic love -- without even particularly trying to do so. And will, if they meet again and spend much time together.
As I said, "recognition."
They realize that they can complement, rather than oppose, one another.
The moment when Cheese confesses his true origin to Pinkie Pie is very significant, because that lets her see all his behavior in the perspective that you just stated. Which is I think when she starts to realize that he loves her.
It seems I have a bit of a bad habit of not favoriting your new stories. Hopefully I've corrected this.
In any case, a great chapter. In Claire's birth, you captured the shift from panicked to disquieted to relieved magnificently, both in grandmother and mother. Claire's multiple faces and limbs, arranged with symmetry, artistry, and intent, call to mind the portrayal of some Hindu gods. I can imagine each of her tongues holding a different item representing one of her roles as the Gate of Paradise, and it's kind of fantastic.
Pinkie's birth was impossibly perfect in every sense, both in terms of events and writing. I think she guided your keyboard as much as her own entrance into the world.
Oh, and Maud is as awesome as she always is, but that doesn't come as any kind of surprise.
Also, re: comments:
Mental image number two: Cheese polishing Pinkie's hooves with a rubber chicken. Again, kind of fantastic.
In any case, eagerly looking forward to more.
4357859
This is a simply gorgeous idea.
The way I look at it, there have been party ponies before, and they've always had more or less the same task: to keep Joy alive. I don't have as developed a mythology as you do, but in a way, they're Equestria's Franciscans, in the sense that they're usually itinerants, they tend not to acquire property and the "rules" involve freely giving happiness. There are never a lot of them: it isn't inherited or inheritable. You've probably heard the expression "you can't teach funny?" There are no written rules, no real history. They just pop up, seemingly out of nowhere. Sometimes one will take a younger one under his wing for a short while and pass along some of his tricks, but that's about it. (Cheese suspects they're all Earth Ponies. Cheese is right.) Point is, they don't have the lineage or historical record or anything like the lore that the Friends of Paradise do.
But there hasn't, in fact, been "a party pony quite like Cheese," or not for a hay of a long time, because there hasn't been a Pinkie for a hay of a long time. The more I think about it, the more I think that on some level, the magic that drives Pinkie picked him out. Why him? He doesn't know, and I'm still trying to figure this one out.
But I'll take "Paradise is spreading," too. Simple, covers everything, and as I said, gorgeous.
*whispers
*sometimes
*extraneous comma
Baking is very important. Without baking, there would be no bagels. And we couldn't have that now, could we?
Of course Pinkie thinks Maud is like her friends. Sisters and friends are (or should be) very similar things, and I'm sure they both make Pinkie feel quite happy to be around.
I'm liking the epic feel of this narration.
*late
*extraneous colon
*to
... "Thai Ponies"? What are those?
img2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20120409090108/mlp/images/thumb/b/b4/Pipe_on_Pinkie%27s_tongue_S2E24.png/320px-Pipe_on_Pinkie%27s_tongue_S2E24.png
I have no idea what you're talking about. Pinkie is a perfectly normal pony, with a perfectly normal pony tongue. Nothing to see here. Move along.
Dude. Stop making your stories better than the last. There's a limit to the good an author can produce. You'll cap out, then it's all downhill from there. It's the conservation narrative, dude.
Anyway, this story is just plain awesome, and this chapter may be the best thing ever.
Re:CheesePie
I actually ship TwiCheesePieLuna in this 'verse as of the revelation that Twilight was Minty in Dragonshy. I somehow see Cheese and Luna getting along really well, perhaps like Pinkie and Rainbow. Twilight would be stuck in the middle of three utterly insane ponies and no way out! Until she realizes that she's also completely bonkers...
4481885
Think Siamese Twins...
¡The Daws!
I started this chapter expecting to just be about Pinkie, that quickly changed.
5162225
Well, it's about her whole family. But it will become more Pinkie-centric as the story progresses, for obvious reasons.
More later--but I am so pleased to see this at last! Igneous is a sweetie.
Well, perhaps that's a bit gushy and maybe not the perfect word to describe him, but still.
Goldie, on the other hand . . .
Well, actually, I sort of like Goldie here. Cloudy's embarrassed, of course, but the fact that her instinct is to talk to her mother is a good thing, and so is Goldie's matter-of-fact "this is the way it works" speech. They do stick out as unusual in their rural context, and probably have received a better education than most in the area (and not just in sex ed.)
5289065
Igneous is, fundamentally, a very good, honorable, fair and kind Pony. And he is naturally sweet where his loved ones are concerned. He's also tough as the rocks he farms, but he's had to learn to be hard to support his family and defend them against danger.
Canon gives a mixed image of him. Pinkie sees him as grim -- but then she is seeing an older Igneous, and this is Pinkie's perspective -- Pinkie is maniacally-cheerful to a point that no other Ponies, save Cheese Sandwich, can match. Neither Maud nor Pinkie seem the products of an abusive home life. And he not only tolerates Trixie, but winds up paying her well for her labors. Seriously, tolerating Trixie long enough for her to earn significant money implies that he's a pretty good guy (and also that Trixie can work pretty hard when she wants to).
I get a lot of my background on the rock farm from Ask the Pie Sisters. Marble and Limestone love their parents, and actually enjoy farm life. But then, they are normally cheerful girls, rather than being maniacally cheerful like Pinkie.
As future chapters will make plain, Maud is naturally very sober and emotionally flat. That's not the product of cruelty, it's the calm rationality which makes her an ideal Guardian of Paradise. Her family can translate from Maud-to-normal Pony emotional language, and they are well aware that she has loves, hates, likes and dislikes as does any other Pony. Igneous comes to love Maud greatly.
So yes, I see Igneous as a really admirable Pony. His rustic ways hide a keen mind, and though he's mostly an autodidact (he didn't even complete elementary school) he's both literate and curious about his world, and he knows more than one would imagine (though Cloudy and Maud are the scholars in his eventual family). He's both modest and taciturn: unless he likes and trusts you a lot, he will mostly let you do the talking, and even if he loves you, he's inclined to hear you out first before commenting.
As to the Second Talk ...
Heh ... but we're seeing that scene from Cloudy's highly-embarassed POV, and worse, for her it's a huge Mood Whiplash between the extreme romantic idealism of that mutual declaration of love and her mother's focus on the physical details of sexuality. Though maybe I overdid the Cringe Comedy there -- it's a gentler scene in context with the next chapter, but I decided to split what was originally going to be one really long chapter into two or three shorter ones. Suffice it to say that Goldie hasn't really blighted Cloudy's fillyhood.
Goldie is a firm believer in love. She's very much in love with her husband Jasper, with whom she's been totally monogamous. And she has a very good opinion of Igneous, who has after all been friendly with Cloudy for years before this, including at ages in which a romantic relationship would have been illegal even in Equestria. She basically trusts Igneous around her daughter, to a degree she might not trust most stallions.
On the other hoof, she's a midwife, and knows all about the ways in which the best of intentions and ideals can have unplanned consequences. And Cloudy's her eldest daughter, so this is the first time she's the chance to give one of her daughters the Second Talk. (Chart got his mostly from Jasper, who is a bit less enthusiastic on the topic).
Why is the Second Talk so embarrassing? Because, as I may or may not have made sufficiently explicit, she's explaining sex to Cloudy in part from the POV of "this is what you can do instead of full physical intercourse." While Cloudy is not quite as innocent as Igneous imagines (he sees her through a Romantic Love Filter, and to some extent always will), she is pretty innocent, and was barely even yet thinking in those terms. Igneous actually gave her her first real kiss.
Surprise the Nth is, as I'm sure you've noticed, a bit crazy. Her romantic advice to Goldie, when Goldie was in her mid-teens, consisted mostly of giggling interspersed with personal reminiscences far more embarrassing than anything Goldie says to Cloudy in the Second Talk. Goldie wishes somepony could have given her the Second Talk, which is why she goes a bit overboard on the topic to Cloudy. Goldie is lucky that she was already with Jasper at the time.
Goldie deeply loves her whole family, and did not mean to embarrass Cloudy as much as she did. Goldie loves her mother, too, though she finds her combination of scientific detachment and personal interest in her own life rather annoying. It would bother Goldie if she realized that she's coming off in much the same way to Cloudy!
Huh, I say, I didn't see this story updating.
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I don't think I've put any of my incompletes on hiatus -- I might even update Trinity at some point. Do you like the new chapter?
One of the stranger truths a person encounters in his or her life: Once upon a time, your parents were young and in love, among other mental states.
Seeing it happen with Cloudy and Igneous is especially bizarre. As you've noted, what we've seen of them in canon is both very limited and portrayed through the lens of Pinkie, which can be a very distorted one indeed. Seeing the ponies here and knowing who they will become makes for a fascinating juxtaposition.
In any case, happy to see this update, especially with a chapter that was by turns sweet and hilarious. Quite appropriate for the origin of Pinkie Pie. I look forward to more.
5289479
I was just saying that it's been close to half a year since this updated, and I was expecting that another story would update (like Divine Jealousy).
While Cloudy Quartz and Igneous Rock are sweet together, I bet they wish it hadn't taken so long to get together properly. Family, when they embarrass you, you know they love you!
5291273
LOL!!! Yes, Goldie can be embarrassing, for the opposite reasons that her mother Surprise is embarrassing. Well, the real delay is going to be the years when Cloudy bears the Daughters of Paradise; Cloudy is only 15 going on 16, during the main part of this chapter, so even given that Equestria has a lower age of consent than modern America, they couldn't have gotten together much earlier (up until around 1-2 years earlier, Cloudy really was a child in the eyes of Igneous, though granted an exceptionally mature and intelligent child).
5290368
One of the points of my fiction in general, not just my fanfiction, is multi-generationality. Everyone was young once, and only the unlucky or immortal will fail to grow old.
Mind you, even the younger Igneous Rock and Cloudy Quartz are hardly wild and crazy. Nowhere near as wild as the young Surprise the Nth was, anyway. And she's still kind of crazy at the point of this story.
Does Paradise have Starlight's personality? Or at least a highly developed version of it? Since IT considered being male a curse, when that wish came into being due to Starlight's subconscious and her being right at the center of the spell went it went off, overriding other wishes in the process.
I wonder if Paradise considered Fluttershy its 'mother' since Bright Eyes was the idea girl of the Wish Spell, and Fluttershy is her twice removed reincarnation. (Bright Eyes -> Zipzee. -> Fluttershy.)
So when did Pinkie Pie remember she was G3 Pinkie and recall those memories? Those memories on a CHILD would drive them insane.
I'll admit, I find the idea that Pinkie and Maud aren't Mr. Pies's daughters . . . cruel somehow. Don't ask me why.
5306069
The whole situation is rather cruel for Igneous, and to some extent Cloudy. It could have turned out very badly -- but he surmounts it through his sterling character, and winds up loved by his wife, his step-daughters, and his full daughters as well.
5289186
As the daughter of a nurse midwife... this is very familiar.
"The fire of scholarship lighted by Lady Tourmaline spread, became science, and gave birth to a technology"
Was this intended to be a complete sentence, e.g. "gave birth to technology", or is there a clause missing?
Glad to find this after reading All The Way Back, and get a different angle on the Paradise Entity, as well as Pinkie.
Okay so this fandom rabbit hole is deeper than I expected-