Please note: there are some spoilers in the comments.
These documents present the adventures of Twilight Sparkle, Princess of Friendship, in a different human world than the one she found through the mirror.
Strangely amnesiac, Twilight finds herself on a dirty hillside on the outskirts of a human city. She must discover the truth of this strange world, and decide what she brings to it.
Rated Teen/Sex for references to various mammals having sex organs and/or desires.
Rated Dark for safety; it's darker than the show, but not than plenty of young adult fiction.
Other tags intentionally omitted, but if even mentions of shipping annoy you, maybe give this a pass.
Additional tags:
-Unreliable Narration
-Leftist Politics
-Earth History
Chapters (51)
What are they on trial for?
4505299 It is intentionally unclear this far.
I don't understand why people are acting rude towards Twilight. I suppose if they think she is some sort of automaton that makes some sense.
Furthermore, an scientist with half a brain knows you don't destroy your only example of something, that would be an unrepeatable experiment.
4515132 Fair on the second point, though I'd argue some of the "scientists" I've seen on the news have said equally idiotic things
Well, that escalated quickly. But didn't see the robot thing coming.
4515132 Also didn't mean to belittle the point, I think it's good. I'm not going to do revisions on this one until the end unless it's a grammar error or something major because I'm worried I'll create a contradiction unless I go through everything at once (and because I already tend to drag my heels on actually writing the new stuff!) but I'll probably tone that one back a bit when and if I do. Thanks for the feedback.
I like this.
I feel somewhat misled by the summary page, but the story's good enough to let me ignore that. Will be watching.
4535499 Thanks for watching! And I had no idea what to write for the summary, so if you've got a suggestion I'm certainly glad to hear it.
"...magic is about making what you want true in the world..."
Apparently what Twilight wanted most in the world was a cliffhanger.
I was... really not sure about the story at first. I admit I cringe at mentions of shipping and it made me almost drop it. But I soldier-ered on through.
Then came the robotic reveal... and I actually found it really original and decided it was worth it. Then, there was the discussion between AJ and Twilight that veered in mysanthropism and I was tempted to drop the fic again.
... and now, Rainbow Dash is in the story.
The story does veer quite a bit. It gave me bad tastes at times but I find myself finding it to be worth it to bear with these. I can definitely understand why the ratings for the story are so divided, with half positive and half negative.
In particular, I'm wondering why the cast is seemingly starting to trickle into the setting. From my guess, they're not so much physically there as incarnated via avatars ; my guess is that this more realistic Earth is completely incompatible with a full travel attempt, meaning only their minds fully travel, with their avatars being reshaped to fit their minds.
As for how and why this entire thing take place... I wouldn't doubt it if a powerful force was at work. And even if not, there's quite a few stories that could be explored ; a more realistic Earth world has a lot of inertia to it. It is far more difficult for an individual, even an exceptional one like the main cast, to affect history. But on another hand... to achieve great things in it is to be immortalized in history in ways that their native setting would not allow.
So... I'm actually curious as to where this is going.
4556379 Thanks for the feedback! I admit this one is pretty weird, and I'm also hoping the plot won't collapse under its own weight or go so far off the rails it ends up not working at all.
I've got at least as many words of a much more traditional adventure/romance tagged story that I'll probably finish and post after I'm done with this one; it'll likely be less divisive (though since you dislike shipping probably won't be for you, alas). But I've always had a serious case of project-ADD that prevents things from getting finished so I'm going to try my best to finish this one before moving on.
I admit all the dislikes are a bit sad, but at the end of the day several people have followed or liked it as well, and if there are people happy to be reading the story, that makes it worth posting, even if some people aren't; after all, they can just not read it and no harm is done. Glad you're liking enough to stick with it.
I think I must clarify regarding the shipping.
Namely, on shipping, I'm one of those weird people who tend to be in 'they grey zone'. On one hand, I tend to be very intolerant of shipping as a general rule. On another hand, some of the stories I love most, both canon and fanon, are romantic ones (and when rating allows it, even going 'to the final step').
But one thing that really make it hard for me is that I tend to be pretty strict with character traits. I prefer romance to be born of character interactions, of characters fitting together organically. Which brings me to a tiny problem that is more a product of MLP.
Basically, I don't like the 'mostly female cast therefore lesbians' aspect of fanon created by settings with predominently female casts. Especially when the guesses are not based on what I see as solid evidence/hints. This is not to say I have a problem with same gender pairings at all (this would make me hypocritical) but well, more that I tend to be critical of romance that is 'told' instead of 'shown'.
Basically, an earlier chapter had a case of 'told' romance through Twilight's memories. This was one of my turn-off points where I considered dropping the fic. I considered this to be an innoffensive, non-plot-affecting point and carried on anyway. I'm glad I did ; the point was really a minor one regarding the greater plot and actually played an interesting role in the revelation that Twilight's memories have been tampered with.
In short, it's not that I hate shipping. It's just that I'm a grumpy kitty. Given it's well-writen, I can endure or even like it.
I actually really like that last chapter. In particular, I was greatly amused by both the mundane yet funny use of Twilight's appearance for making money as well as Rainbow Dash indulging her fans over the internet as well as her taking the fandom in stride, basking in the attention.
A rather nice change from the usual expected reaction and frankly, considering Twilight & Rainbow Dash have not been exposed to the true drawbacks of celebrity and/or may not be exposed to them, it makes sense (the actual drawbacks being paparazzis & the total loss of privacy).
Not much plot development but the humor more than makes up for it, in this one.
4560558 One of my favorite things about MLP is that all six of the leads are obviously great friends, but react to things really differently. I went with the diary/documents thing for the whole first bit of the story in part to make it feel really limited to Twilight's perspective. It's still basically told by her (if not first person) insofar as she's present for everything and I'm (unless I messed up somewhere) not 'tell'ing anything about any other character's internal states, but it's really fun to get a bit outside it and have her playing off against another one of the show's major characters again. I really liked writing Dash in this chapter, and I'm glad it came through.
Well, this is an interesting story so far.
It leaves a few questions; how did Twilight end up in that robot's body to start with? What bought Rainbow there, and can other ponies be bough through in the same way? Is there even an Equestria that they came from, or are their memories formed out of the episodes Lasombra put into Twilight's head?
When Twilight does to sleep holding a Rainbow Dash doll, she ends up with Rainbow Dash - what happens if she goes to sleep holding (say) a Buzz Lightyear toy? Does she wake up with a disorientated spaceman? (Might be dangerous - he comes with an arm laser. A barbie doll might be safer. Probably best not to try letting her sleep with a teddy bear...).
4565874 Thanks for reading! If I do my job right, then you will eventually know the answers to these questions...
Added an author note to "Pursuit" to this effect, but I'm having some trouble making the next chapter read as I'd like, and have a big work event to run tomorrow, so it won't be up tonight, and might be delayed until as late as Monday night. Should be back on one a day after that, at least until next weekend. Thanks for reading.
I really liked this chapter, actually.
Very good scene as a whole. Rather slow but an interesting hindsight in the origins of Twilight's avatar and a less negative insight on Lasombra (or should I say, David), making his initial reactions more understandable. Rainbow Dash continue to be a source of humor, as well.
Wondering about the shooter story's conclusion. Also, other people are starting to make prototypes like Twilight's... are they trying to create avatars or mass produce what they'll think are replicas of show characters? Of course, as long as it's the Mane Six and other such characters, it's likely not to cause too many problems.
Unrelated to chapter theory time!
I realize that while one may worry about any of the villains showing up, the real nightmare scenario would be, funnily enough, Celestia & Luna ; due to their sheer mass and thus gravity effects upon Earth, trying to manipulate the sun and moon would cause disastrous, apocalyptic consequences especially that the solar system in this universe is already in movement. Likewise, in a world of conflicting religions, fateless, conflicting ideologies, Celestia & Luna could cause a world war of a horrifying scale if they tried to establish their harmony without realizing that their omniscient morality license & assumptions about what's right do not apply to this world.
Earth is a chaotic world. So similar in many ways, yet radically opposite others. Solutions that works in the other setting will not work in this one.
Funnily enough, Discord would probably be the least problematic villain if he is summoned, even if it's not his post-redemption self ; Earth is, as stated above, an inherently chaotic world with an inherently chaotic sapient population. In fact... though I doubt villains would show up and that the cast is likely to be limited to the Mane Six in terms of avatars, I think it would be interesting to see how Discord would react to such a world ; he's used to be the 'spirit of disharmony', to be hated and rejected to the point that embracing his role as the bad guy is all he can do with his life and that when a single soul actually come to not despise him, he decide to go good despite his monstrous ego and selfishness because he's that alone. And now... he'd see a world where his rules are the natural order, where everything is inherently chaotic and unpredictable, with recurring patterns having to be learnt through arduous research and assumptions often proving wrong (who raise the sun & moon? The Earth spins around the sun, silly monkeys! Hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes... the way the nature of Earth can be summed as 'Everfree. Everywhere'. And so on).
4598231 My favorite of the last few to write was "Pursuit", but I enjoy doing a bit of action here and there, so that's not shocking; I was pretty pleased with how this one turned out as well. I'm glad it worked for you - I knew we hadn't seen David at his best, and obviously he plays in to a lot of the larger stuff the ponies have to deal with. And of course being something of a fan of the show myself (shocking, right) I sometimes find myself thinking about how weird some of my own behavior would be when directed at a non-fictional creature, let alone the behavior of fandom as a whole. Not that I've built a Twilight-Bot or anything of course, but I'd feel pretty weird to have so much merchandise themed around a real person/creature
. I like to think I'd do better than David did, but it's easy for me to worry I wouldn't.
This one... is extremely interesting, actually. And actually adress one of the elephants in the room that are not adressed regarding Twilight Sparkle.
She has ascended. She was gifted with what is functional godhood. Okay, so she's pretty low on the totem pole by many standarts and even by her own world's... but the point is, she was welcomed to the 'big equines' club, if one may see what I mean.
... and this bring some very interesting questions. Not just in the context of being on Earth but toward her life as a whole.
Why is claiming to be a god arrogant, when one think about it? It is not the claim itself as it is the proclamation of perfection and omnipotence associated with it. On one hand, it is good never to forget that ultimately, the true difference between a deity and a mortal is age and experience ; perception is unfortunately rare and a gift that is not necessarely exclusive to immortals. But on the other hand... "just a mortal" can ultimately end up as a denial of reponsability, as running away from one's potential and duty.
Twilight cannot run away from her duties forever. Even if she is not destined or fit to rule, the truth is that she has already ascended and proven her godhood ; Tirek was a blatantly god-like opponent, having stolen the magic of all of ponykind, including other gods. Twilight smited him. She unleashed a form of harmony previously unknown and overcame him. Even if you don't count the comics, Twilight has proven herself a guardian and a paragon of friendship.
And I think this will be a lesson to her, one that will be important when(if) she return to Equestria. It is important never to lose sight of who she is, of others. The moment mortals become mere ants to her, she have lost her right to wield her power. But she cannot run away from her duties. She cannot deny her role, her impact, and how people look up to her.
It is not about immortality. It is about having a gift and not wasting it.
In a way, it reminds me of a movie I saw, where the main character was a genius in mathematics and if he wanted, could do absolutely great things but due to a fear of rising above his friends, limit himself to a mediocre existence. In the end, it turn out that his friends end up *hating* this ; they know he is better than them and they see him wasting away, pretending to be something he's not.
And I think this case will end up applying to Twilight's friends, in a way. Twilight has ascended, it is clear she is meant for great things, that she has grown too 'big' to just remain in that library of Ponyville to read books on magic all day apart from the occasional party with Pinkie and hanging out with her other friends. But out of a fear of arrogance, out of a fear of leaving behind her friends or of seeming like she's trying to eclipse her mentor, she remain firmly in the shadow of Celestia and chained to her original identity. They see just how wonderful Twilight is, just how much good she could bring if she actually stepped outside and shared her love with everyone, not just the five of them. But she's so firmly locked in Celestia's shadow, so afraid of stepping on them that she won't.
Frankly, this is an interesting subject. Though the question of immortality and of Twilight outliving her friends was often brought up, this one is one I never saw being brought up in a fanfic yet. And given what Earth is and how complicated a world it is... I think it is fitting, too (as she cannot rely on Celestia or anyone seeing her Princess nature & status as legitimate. Any duties she have are born from her power and potential alone and from what she will do with them). I think the subject you brought up is worth exploring, and not just in the context of Earth.
Ah - a third pony joins them. This leads to some important questions - will any 'Mane Six' robot turn into an actual pony?
And, as follow-ons to that - what happens if the group that had the Rarity-bot manages to produce (say) a Fluttershy-bot, and keep it hidden until it 'awakes'?
And what happens if they produce a second Rarity-bot - will there be two Rarities running around? Or will only the first one awake?
Or what about a Tirek-bot?
Ooh, two comments on one chapter, I am excited! Glad y'all are enjoying.
4603413
In previous chapters, it has already happened ; the Mane Six do not enter the setting through normal 'magic portal' means. Instead, their souls enter an "avatar" which then transform into a flesh & blood reincarnation of them after a while. Twilight was a robot before being flesh & blood and actually spent a good number of the earlier chapters as a robotic life-form before turning to flesh & blood. Likewise, Rainbow Dash entered the setting as a plush doll.
As for villains... none yet. Not sure if any will appear at all. Though I don't think Tirek would be problematic if he appeared (as he has no magic to tap into and would thus be stuck in his small-sized, weaker form). Discord wouldn't be much of a problem either (as this is a chaotic world). As I theorized before, what would cause most problems would not be the villains but rather Celestia or Luna as this world is incompatible with their styles in a radical, dangerous way and their powers could have disastrous consequences if unleashed.
You do bring an interesting point too...
Considering characters incarnate through replicas of themselves, will this motivate humans to create physical incarnations of them in the hopes of summoning them? Will the companies that make dolls of Tirek and other villains have a mass recall of them and destroy them?
4607481
Well, yes; what I was wondering was whether it would happen to all robots based on the Lasombra design or not. Is the world ready for half-a-dozen Pinkie Pies?
Yay comments!
Back to being a busy event organizer person this weekend, update Sunday night if I'm not a zombie, Monday otherwise.
Awww, the vote failed.
...I suppose there's more dramatic tension this way, not to mention which if it hadn't that would have really hurt Mr. Gray's credibility as a villain. (I assume he's behind the suspiciously well-supplied protestors) Not to mention which, it's hardly like the ponies are out of options. So, from a narrative viewpoint, it really makes a lot of sense for the vote to fail.
Still...
Ironically, the point that bothered me about this chapter is actually not exclusive to your story at all and is more a pet peeve of mine with the fandom as a whole.
I do reckon it's technically a minor element but I felt like sharing it anyway.
For the sake of preventing drama, I've writen down and sent my point via PM.
4627494 Briefly, the objection had to do with Dash's sexuality, which I feared might turn a few people off a bit, so I (with permission) have reposted my reply here, because I thought it was an interesting issue, and others might be interested. Here goes:
She's bi in the story, which got a brief mention.
Clearly there's not much evidence either way on the show, since it doesn't handle sexuality and only Rarity and Twilight are shown with any romantic interests. Well, there's that one bit in Simple Ways where it's possible Applejack is about to tell Trenderhoof she's gay, but she gets cut off so could also be saying any number of other things. I also do think it's reasonable to argue that Rainbow's relationship with Gilda might have been sexual; Gilda's jealousy in particular makes this a reasonable interpretation, though "she's a brash jerk" is equally defensible. Here, I chose to interpret it as the former, but I don't think it's "right", just defensible.
Anyway, most sexuality studies I'm aware of have most humans at least a little bit bi - Kinsey scale and so forth. What little we do know about ponies indicates they're quite willing to accept a lot of different kinds of relationships: no one ever tells Spike his crush on Rarity is morally problematic, for example, or that he shouldn't have it, and there are a bunch of ponies that live with ponies of other species. To me, it's totally reasonable to broaden that interpretation into things like sexuality; I'm not even sure my "headcanon" ponies care nearly as much about label-dividing sexuality as humans do. (That's why I had Twilight say "into mares" rather than "gay", because she isn't necessarily assuming she's exclusively into mares.)
Anyway, the overall nature of the story is about a meeting of cultures and ideas, which is something that I find fascinating in history. One element of that that's always particularly fraught is the sexual/romantic side. This isn't supposed to be a romantic story, so I didn't want to have a big relationship take over the focus from Twilight and her friends trying to get by in and shape another world, but I still wanted to recognize the issue (and perhaps have it lead to some increased drama later on, you'll have to see about that one). Given that, I knew somepony was going to have a fling with a human. Of the ponies currently around, Rainbow seemed like the best choice - it was her or Pinkie, but I felt like this was a good point in the story to have it happen, since tensions with the humans are high for other reasons, and Pinkie's not here. As for a fling with a woman rather than a dude? At first I didn't consider the issue at all, and was just like 'she's gonna hook up with some human', but when it came time to write it, two things made up my mind.
First, Mary was one of the few "named" side characters around, and she already had a bit of a relationship with Dash through her work, and I thought it was a funny sort of complexity to add there. Originally she gave Dash free stuff because she thought the store would benefit from the publicity, and that's still a valid plan/interpretation, but it amused me to add this second level of "oh wait, maybe she was also into her". I could have had her hook up with David or an anonymous human dude, but the former seemed too likely to take over the story since Twilight would likely view it weirdly, and the latter didn't seem as satisfying.
Second, because same-gender pairings are more controversial among humans, I thought it'd highlight the culture shock aspect and perhaps open up some potential for further such drama down the line. Especially with both of them being female, and with our tendency to judge human women for what they do with their bodies...
Basically, I think you're right that assuming Dash is gay isn't supported by the show, but I felt like making her bi here was as reasonable as anything else (given I was mentioning sexuality freely and not making them actually asexual) and served the purposes of the story better than other options.
Well, that escalated quickly!
...Mr. Gray is going to be terribly smug and "you-should've-listened-to-me" next time they meet him, isn't he? He probably hired the sniper. (I don't think he would be the sniper himself, he seems more a in-the-background-planning kind of villain).
Okay, now Mr. Gray is just asking for trouble.
Hey all, no update tonight as I'm feeling a bit under the weather and am going to turn in early. Well, early for my usual, anyway. Hopefully I'll get up correspondingly early feeling better and get something out this afternoon, otherwise, I've got an easy weekend for once so should be plenty then.
A note on comments while I'm at it: I read and appreciate every comment on the story. While I'm mostly just amused that it seems to consistently maintain an exact balance of likes and dislikes, I love that people are following and talking about the story. I usually don't respond, though, because I'm intentionally concealing and revealing what I do, so mostly I don't have much more to say! Don't be offended, and please do continue to comment, I love to know that people are having fun reading.
Pinkie, you are soooo random.
Typical... Gotta love Pinkie
"Pants so serious?" I've not come across this idiom before. Anyone mind explaining?
That ending... was random.
Wonder how Pinkie punched through given no mentions was made of a doll or a robot.
Noticed your chapters are overall pretty short. On another hand, you update regularly so it even out in a way ; your story doesn't stall like so many others do. Still wish for longer chapters at times but I guess it's a fair trade.
4650602 Because I want to update almost every day (every day that I don't get sick or have a big event to run for work, that is), I have to limit myself to what I can reasonably write in an evening, yeah. I guess I could go through and consolidate chapters later, but meh. It's important to me that I update as often as possible.
(Also, not saying that this is what happened, but the humans got Twilight little stuffed versions of all her friends while she was sick - it was mentioned, though only in passing, during that bit.)
4650289 It was meant to be a riff on "grumpy-pants" and other Pinkie-isms but I'm not super happy with it. If I come up with better I'll go back and change it. I find Pinkie's voice really hard (to be fair, so does the show
) so I'm hoping I'll get it to work.
Huh. Another pony toy becomes a pony, and this time without spending all night being cuddled by a pony. The pony influence is spreading...
"the flat marble of the Civil War memorial, surrounding the statue of Abraham Lincoln."
The symbolism is strong with this one...
4657632 It's funny, I thought the statue was Paul Revere (I never really looked at it that closely) and originally had that, but then figured I should double check, and it turned out to be Lincoln.
...oh dear. Mr. Gray just doesn't know when to stop, does he?
I predict that ten minutes after Fluttershy wakes up, any guards in the room will be in tears and having a crisis of conscience.
I wonder if Twilight can track down her friends' magic?
...I wonder what the box is connected to? Have they got an animatronic Tirek that they're hoping will come to life in time to take Twilight's magic?
4673341 That isn't what I have planned, but is a hilarious mental image. 50's sci-fi Tirek with lame voice box just lurching around, Twilight all
4673341
I think the two humans are supposed to be reminiscent of Tirek and Scorpan, or perhaps Tirek and Discord. The way the bigger human is described - massive, looming, and in charge of the magic-sucking doohickey - is specifically reminiscent of Tirek. I'll admit, though, that there's nothing to connect the smaller human to either Scorpan or Discord except association with the big one, and the theory falls apart if the big one's not supposed to be reminiscent of Tirek.
Also, it appears that the big fella hasn't done his research. If what he has is indeed a magic-sucking device, then he's neglected to use it on Applejack and Fluttershy. Not to mention that he doesn't seem to know the first thing about Lord of the Rings. Gandalf was an inspiration and guide, not a magical problem-solver, and he performed in that role even after his martyrdom.
4674356 Clearly among their many sins, they only saw the movies.
4674409
Clearly this will be his downfall.
Magic prereleases this weekend -> probably no update until Sunday.
4681799
Have fun!
Also, I'm kicking myself for not recognizing an anti-Prior device on sight.