Not A Letter to Hostler, I Swear
Author's Note: This chapter talks about material that may be triggering for some readers, beyond what we've already seen; specifically rape, female on male.
Well, dear readers, something extremely strange has just happened, and I'm not entirely certain how I feel about it. You see, I went down to Baltimare to reclaim my Element of Rage from the Kraken in Mareland Bay, and... well, under the circumstances I'm not sure the phrase "I got lucky" is actually entirely apropos, so let's be a trifle blunter.
Your Humble Narrator just got laid.
No, no, this isn't turning into Letters to Hostler. (I prefer Playcolt anyway. Although I assure you I only read it for the articles.) I promise you this is relevant. While I haven't seen a lot of action down south since breaking loose, either time, and obviously being a statue puts a serious damper on one's sexytime fun, I'm not the sort of draconequus who feels the need to share his exploits with the entire world. Believe it or not, I actually like my privacy in that regard. But this is in fact an example of the horrors Anon has inflicted on the world, which I suspect is why I feel so ambivalent about it. On the one hand, I must admit I enjoyed myself; on the other hand, I'm well aware that if I hadn't been me, if I actually had been the unicorn stallion I was impersonating... well, I suspect I wouldn't have had nearly as much fun.
You see, reclaiming my Element of Rage from the Kraken in Mareland Bay was actually very anticlimactic. I was expecting some sort of epic battle, some opportunity to make it rain exploding cream pies underwater, but the moment the Kraken saw me, he swam off in a giant cloud of ink, leaving all his stuff behind. I drew smiley faces on some of his ancient relics and animated a chest of gems to nag him like a housewife, but with him absent I couldn't do most of the marvelous things I'd planned. So I picked up my Element, teleported it home, and decided to explore the city. I'm still having fun learning all about what the world's become while I was stuck in stone, after all, and I feel obligated to gather as much information about what Anon's done to the place as I can.
So I took the form of a unicorn, a gray fellow with a tornado cutie mark, and went into Baltimare to get a bite to eat. As I mentioned yesterday, I do like to eat crabs occasionally, because they're too stupid to have any fun with otherwise, and Baltimare's famous for them. I left the extremely touristy Inner Harbor and went searching for a crab shack someplace along the waterfront, and found myself in the oh-so-hipster and entirely misnamed region of Foals' Point. (I am assured that the name actually has little to do with foals, or only tangentially anyway; an earth mare by the name of Foals Plenty built a massive home on the waterfront for herself and her twenty-seven children, who then grew up and spread out throughout the area. Depending on who you talk to, Foals' Point is either named after Foals Plenty herself, or named for the truly inordinate number of children and grandchildren she had running around the place.) Foals' Point is now the sort of place where the artists who think Canterlot is too bourgeois and Manehattan is too commercial congregate to eke out a meager living selling to their fellows, and if a trend becomes trendy, it's already passe for the forward-looking ponies of Foals' Point. In other words, a place where ponies create, and demand from each other, constant change and variation in their furniture, their art, their clothing and their food. My kind of place, inasmuch as anything ponies ever create is.
I was looking for a crab shack, but I found something different. Literally. The name of the restaurant was "Something Different" and their shtick was that their menu changes every day. Though they do make a nod to commercial viability in that they have crabs all the time, during the appropriate season. The place was owned by a middle-aged earth stallion with a delightfully incomprehensible cutie mark, a circle of gradient rainbow shading that he assured me represented constant change within defined parameters. Perhaps I'll steal it for my next pony form. My waitress, a light blue unicorn with a golden beehive hairdo, wore roller skates as she served me crabs, peach nectar, and linguine in mint alfredo sauce with pine nuts. She informed me, at length, that she was single, that her fellow waitresses were also single, that the proprietor had a herd of mares his own age and no interest in his employees, and that this was a subject of distress to her. I made up girlfriends, a white unicorn and a dark blue pegasus in Canterlot who were sisters and worked at the Palace, to dissuade her from her obvious intentions. (I'm sure Celestia and Luna wouldn't mind being anonymized and used as part of my cover story.)
When I'd paid my bill, she brought me out another drink, compliments of the house, she said. This one was a hard pink lemonade, which was something of a novelty for me -- in my day nopony thought of making lemonade alcoholic. Now, generally speaking I don't drink alcohol, because I enjoy the natural chaos of my thought processes and don't find that consuming something which dulls my senses actually improves my experience much. I like the effect the stuff has on ponies, but unlike ponies, I'm already uninhibited. I decided that this time I'd make a partial exception, to experience the flavor, and turn it non-alcoholic after I'd already drunk it... and discovered when I did so that there was a strong sedative in it, and another potion I didn't recognize. Maybe two.
This intrigued me. Why was this waitress drugging an ordinary unicorn customer off the street? Did she have some notion of who I was? Had I fallen in with an organized crime ring? Was she planning on selling me for body parts? I decided to pretend the drug had taken effect, to see what she would do.
Now, under most circumstances, potions intended for ponies don't work on me. Unless they don't use harmonic magic, which I tend to disrupt simply by existing, and they work on virtually every vertebrate species, it's very unlikely that they'll have the same effect on me as on a pony, since quite aside from being the avatar of chaos I'm also a completely different species. But when I'm impersonating a pony, I can... how to put this... I can model pony biology when I'm in pony form, so that I can feel the effects of potions that would normally work on a pony, but override those effects if I decide I don't like them. There are certain exceptions -- nothing that will shut down pony magic will work on me because my magic works on different principles, for instance -- but generally that's how it works.
So I let the effects of the potions through, while blocking the alcohol (alcohol, by the way, does work on every vertebrate species in more or less the same ways, and most certainly does not rely on harmonic magic, so it would affect me in the same way as it would a pony if I didn't know how to block it.) What I found was that they caused dizziness and an overwhelming need to use the bathroom. I let both of those sensations continue, mostly for the novelty of it; I can count on the fingers of one paw the number of times I've felt dizzy since coming into my full power, and jokes about the chaotic destruction of bathrooms aside, I don't normally bother with the more revolting parts of biological existence. I eat because I like to eat, and I sleep because apparently my brain needs me to, but normally I use my power to avoid needing to use a bathroom unless there's a particularly funny joke or pointed commentary to make by doing otherwise, which makes the feeling of actually having to go unusual for me, and I relish unusual sensations.
After I was done with my business in the bathroom and was washing up, I felt the dizziness increase drastically. The potion was attempting to put me to sleep. That, I blocked. I fell to the floor and feigned unconsciousness, waiting to see what would happen.
The waitress came into the stallions' room through a separate door, presumably a cleaner's access, and levitated me onto her back. She then carried me down a set of particularly rickety and broken stairs, which would almost certainly have been entirely unsafe for the earth pony proprietor, by levitating temporary steps into place over the broken ones. Around this time I began to feel twinges similar to, but at the same time very different from, the previous need to use a urinal, and I started to have some sense of what might be going on here.
She'd dosed me with an aphrodisiac.
I'd be lying if I claimed the idea wasn't, mmm, exciting in and of itself... but I was also deeply curious. This was not normal behavior for an Equestrian. There are places in the world, and certainly there are other worlds, where this behavior might not be so very unusual for a pony, but Equestria is not one of them.
I continued to feign unconsciousness while she brought me into the basement, dropped me on a simple wooden bed with a somewhat uncomfortable hay-filled mattress, tied my legs to the four legs of the bed, and put a magic-blocking ring on my horn. This didn't actually do anything to block my magic because I'm not really a unicorn, but since she didn't know that, I was getting the distinct impression that her intentions for me were not particularly friendly.
Now this whole thing was quite a novel experience for me. I'll admit there have been times, during my adventures in world-walking, where I've found myself low on magic and in the custody of a local potentate with more puissance, at that moment, than I'd have been able to muster up, when I've found it convenient to engage in romantic activities I'd have otherwise have been uninclined toward. When you're trying to stall for time until you can build up enough magic to get home, and someone more powerful than you are at the moment finds you to be an exotic attraction to add to their collection of unusual bedwarmers, you don't say no. Well, unless their particular fetish is biting off your head and laying their eggs in your corpse, but as long as that's not on the table, you don't say no.
These experiences weren't always the most pleasant, given that they were aimed at the goal of pleasing someone else and not my personal enjoyment, but when most of the creatures you might potentially find attractive either turn up their nose at you or run away screaming because most ponies have no taste whatsoever, it turns out that being wanted that badly is an exciting sensation in and of itself. Besides, I'd be a poor excuse for an avatar of chaos if I wasn't able to rapidly adapt to the unexpected.
At other times, I've engaged in a bit of role-playing with a willing partner, or a few such. When you're virtually all-powerful, the fantasy of having control taken from you can be an intriguing one. But the thing about a role-playing fantasy conducted with consenting partners is that everyone involved knows it's a fantasy, and knows where the power really resides. And when I've actually had less control over the circumstances than I might have liked, as mentioned above, my enthusiastic cooperation, whether real or feigned, has usually been enough to keep me out of any sort of restraints, or at least, any sort of restraints I couldn't easily slip out of.
So I'd actually never ended up a "prisoner" of someone who sincerely believed me to be a helpless victim, while in reality retaining all of my power. I was enormously curious as to how far she'd go with this. Also, well, it had been a while since I'd actually been with a partner. Over a thousand years, honestly. Just because I have access to full-tactile illusions that are almost indistinguishable from the real thing doesn't mean I don't relish the unpredictability of a partner who isn't a puppet I'm running with my powers. And it turns out that the fantasy of having no control is improved when the other party sincerely believes that to be the case.
But the fantasy would have been utterly ruined if I hadn't played the part, and besides, as I said, I was curious. Would an Equestrian pony from the home of love, friendship and harmony really do what it looked like she was planning to do? So when she woke me up, I stayed in character. As enjoyable as this was for Discord, Lord of Chaos, I was quite certain that Twister, ordinary unicorn stallion, would have had a different opinion, and I played my role to the fullest. I threatened, demanded, struggled, pleaded, and even blushed quite prettily with feigned humiliation when she made rather stereotypical remarks about the miscongruence between my verbal and my physical reactions, along the nature of "Your lips say no, no, but your heart says yes, yes" (it was much cruder than that, and made reference to bodily parts far less unisex than the heart, but you get the idea.)
Then after she was done having her wicked way with me, her friends showed up. Apparently I'd arrived near the shift change for the waitresses. I'm really trying to avoid letting this turn into an unrealistic-sounding pornographic fantasy, so let's just say a fun time was had by all, though I did my best to make them believe I wasn't included amongst the ranks of fun-havers there, except possibly in the purely biological sense.
After they were all satisfied, and they began discussing what sort of memory erasure spell the ringleader was going to use on me (there was another unicorn in the group, plus one earth pony and one pegasus, but apparently my original kidnapper was the most magically adept of the bunch), I expressed disappointment that the experience was over, snapped my bonds off, reverted to my true form, and delighted in their looks of utter horror. You have never seen four mares flee as rapidly and desperately as those four did. And none of them were even willing to give me an address for a thank you card or a place to come calling with a future invitation! Mares today, they're so uncouth.
But of course that's exactly the problem.
You see, given that I am the spirit of disharmony and I have a fairly good ability to detect events which generate it, particularly when I'm trapped in stone and have little else I can perceive, and given how much disharmony the act of rape wreaks on the majority of its victims... I know exactly how common rape used to be in Equestria. Which is to say, not common at all. There were maybe ten rapists a year, and usually all of them involved a romantic partner deciding that they were unpleased at the slowness of their courtship and doing something unpleasant to correct the situation in their favor. In the rare years when a stranger rapist might be operating, he (stranger rapists were usually stallions) might claim three or four victims in one year before getting caught, at which point the Royal Guard would often have to be called out to keep the locals from lynching him, and he'd end up in a Canterlot dungeon for the rest of his life. The ones of both genders who'd misuse their own lovers might do so for a more extended period of time, given that the Equestrian drive toward harmony tends to lead such things to get swept under rugs, but generally the truth would out eventually and the guilty party would be punished or forcibly "reformed" by spell.
The type of event I'd just been through, where a group imprisons, restrains, and gang-rapes a stranger, never happens in Equestria. Well, never say never, but outside of wartime, it might have happened once or twice a century during my millennium of imprisonment, and it inevitably resulted in the perpetrators being caught. Even during my reign, when I regret to say that crime in general was significantly higher than during Celestia's spell-backed rule of enforced harmony -- the price one pays for freedom is inevitably that some misuse it -- rape wasn't overly common. I have no numbers for that time period because I was at war with math in those days, but my gut feeling is that there might have been a tenfold increase during my period of unrule -- a hundred ponies or so a year might have gotten it into their heads to decide that no meant yes rather than ten -- which is still not a lot by the standards of other nations and other worlds I've visited. Equestrian ponies just don't tend to think that sex is something they're entitled to because they want it, or because they're more powerful, or whatever. Murder is more common than rape most years (mainly because it's a lot easier to murder a fellow pony in a sudden and immediately regretted burst of rage than it is to suddenly commit rape.)
And yet my assailants had behaved as if they were practiced at this. Which meant that, since I'd gotten out of stone, the gang rape of strangers had gone from something that happened twice a century and was immediately caught and punished to something that was common enough that I could accidentally walk into it during one of my few excursions into pony society, and unpunished enough that the same group, operating out of a restaurant, could ravish more than one victim.
So, out of curiosity, I tried going to the police with my complaint. I was laughed at. And informed that mares can't rape stallions. Given that in several of the cases of ongoing marital rape that I mentioned above, the perpetrator was a mare and her victim was her husband, this had not previously been the general opinion of Equestrian jurisprudence.
I've visited the human homeworld enough to know that there, rapes are extraordinarily common, stranger rapes are greatly feared even though they're relatively rare in comparison to acquaintance rape, gang rapes are far from unheard of, and the vast majority of rape involves males victimizing females, despite which neither males nor females can typically get justice, because it's assumed that males can't be raped by females and that any male who'd commit rape is a demonic monster easily detectable for what he is and so any female claiming that an ordinary, friendly-looking fellow raped her has to be lying. I knew exactly who had imported stranger rape into Equestria, and who was influencing the legal system to ignore it to such an extent that gang rapists could victimize customers of the restaurant they worked at without getting caught (memory spells are far from perfect; even mine can only erase the last twenty minutes or so before they turn seriously erratic, and unicorn memory spells are worse. One of their victims has almost certainly remembered something, and yet they're still operating.)
Human power fantasies are unbelievably irritating. Human sexual fantasies can be downright horrifying.
One might think I'd be happy with this circumstance. Rape is pretty much concentrated, packaged disharmony, rather like a bite-sized, single serving war in a package, and unlike war, it leaves the majority of its victims alive. But... it's just so jejune. While it's rare in Equestria, it's not nearly so rare in other nations, and it's just such an easy, predictable means of breaking a victim. I believe the terms the video gamers use is a "cheese move"? Those who engage in it because they want sex are just proving themselves to be pathetic losers that nopony actually wants; those who engage in it because they want to prove their power over somepony or harm them emotionally have no creativity and are generally massively insecure about their own power. It's dull and predictable and more than a little bit disgusting. War has more creativity and strategy to it, and I don't like war because the end result is generally quite a lot of death, and I don't find death entertaining.
So here I am back at the Chaos Cave (Grotto of Disharmony? Oh, decisions, decisions), and I'll confess, this entire incident has left me somewhat troubled. I feel as if I ought to be pleased, because on a personal level there are no downsides to this.
My enemy has just ensured an even greater supply of energy for me. As the chaos avatar, I have the ability to manipulate raw magic, which is generated by change and transformation, as I mentioned above; but disharmony is special to me. The emotions of sentient beings produce their own magic, in and of themselves; what's commonly called "dark magic" is magic fueled by what are normally thought of as negative emotions -- hatred, fear, anger. Changelings draw energy from the emotion of love -- as does Princess Pinkness, but changelings drain individuals, whereas Cadance draws from either individuals or the overall available pool of love in the local thaumosphere. Well, I do the same with disharmony. Conflict, strife, dissent, my namesake, these things feed me directly in a way that even chaos doesn't; chaos stirs up raw magic that anyone can use, and I'm better at using it than they are, but disharmony specifically feeds me. I could live without it, unlike changelings, but ugh, what a boring existence that would be.
So due to Anon's actions there are now small suitcase nukes of disharmony going off all over Equestria, unless there's something special about Baltimare, which I doubt. I should be pleased with this. I don't personally approve of rape, but I do very much approve of me being more powerful, so from a selfish perspective this is a good thing for me. And, well, I had a lot of fun in Zebrica and a lot of fun in Ponyville when I first broke free, but I haven't had this sort of fun in... you know, I don't even want to count up the years, because that would just be depressing. So again, from a personal perspective this did me nothing but good. Sure, rape is a fairly pathetic way to stir up disharmony, but I'm not the one committing it, and the proximate causes are being influenced against their control, and the ultimate cause is an entity I've already sworn to fight and I've already recognized as a pathetic loser with too much power, so this really shouldn't bother me at all.
I'm really having some difficulty figuring out why it does.
Anyway! You don't want to hear about my personal dilemmas, and being that you undoubtedly don't draw energy from disharmony and would probably have significantly greater objections than I do to being kidnapped, tied up, and used as a pleasure toy, I've conveyed what I needed to here, which is that Anon's reign is even worse than I thought and even if you were okay with stallions being turned into mares you are probably not okay with those that remained stallions being gang-raped, so you should agree with me that Anon is totally evil and needs to be stopped. Right? That is the point I was trying to make here, right? I mean, yes, it is (why am I asking you what point I am trying to make? You're not even here, and odds are, if you're reading this, I'm dead, so it isn't even as if I'll get to meet you and ask your opinion of my writing.)
Back to my interviews with the Elements of Harmony, then. I decided to talk with Rainbow Dash next, after my abject failure with Fluttershy. This time, I thought, I'd go in with the explicit purpose, not just of gathering information, but of using Dash's loyalty to friends against her loyalty to her lover and driving a wedge straight down the center of her brain. Mentioning the terrible things that Anon had supposedly said about Rarity and Fluttershy should stir up some righteous anger against Anon, and playing on Dash's enormous ego might give me an excellent opportunity to make her jealous of her friends. We'd see what direction she'd fall in.
Predictably, I found her sleeping in a tree. It was going to be either that or a cloud, I'd guessed. I hovered above her, snapped up a cotton candy cloud, and made it rain chocolate milk all over her. (If I'd been thinking about what I was thinking, this might have tipped me off, but I'm not good at thinking about what I'm thinking even when I'm not being mind controlled into a predictable idiot.)
She rolled over and glared at me. "DISCORD!"
"Hahaha, look at that face! What an expression you have! Simply delightful! Excuse me." I stuck a glass under the cloud and let it fill with chocolate milk. "What's the matter, Rainbow Dash? I thought you liked pranks!"
She just growled at me. "How wonderful! Come on, give me that 'grr' face!" I chortled. I drank the glass and tossed the chocolate milk to the ground, where it exploded. "Growl for me, Rainbow, let me know you still care."
I dispelled the cloud and hovered above her, just a bit to her side. It was a bit surprising to me that she hadn't said anything, aside from shouting my name. "Well, you're certainly talkative today," I said. "What's the matter? Cat--"
Before I could finish the sentence, she lunged at me. The illusion dropped only seconds before the Element of Protection nearly skewered me. I dodged backward, genuinely startled to see that it was Anon in the tree. "This is different!" I said. "Can't say I was expecting--" He lunged for me again. This should have resulted in him ignominiously falling off the tree, but did not. A human shouldn't be able to just lay back in the top of a tree anyway -- they're great at tree climbing, but it's because of their monkey arms. They can't twine themselves around a branch like I can and they can't use magic to treat the top of the tree as a solid object like pegasi can. I flew backward, and Anon followed me, floating in air. For a moment I was going to say something outraged about the unfairness of him suddenly developing more random superpowers, but then I realized I recognized the magical aura around him.
I looked down. This was almost a mistake, as taking my eyes off Anon for even a moment nearly resulted in my losing a limb, but I saw Twilight Sparkle down below, her horn glowing. So she'd been responsible for the illusion, and she was levitating Anon.
"Did you think we wouldn't get wise to your tricks?" Anon shouted at me. "After what you did to Rarity, did you really think we wouldn't be prepared for you?"
"Honestly, given that you haven't found Luna yet, yes," I said. "You don't seem to be all that bright."
'You'll tell us where she is, monster, if I have to beat it out of you!"
With Twilight moving him telekinetically, I had no hope of evading him indefinitely. I could have run for it, but maybe he was affecting me... or maybe I was just being my usual self, assuming that he couldn't really hurt me because usually nothing could. He'd gotten in a lucky shot in our first encounter, but surely I could protect myself from a jumped-up human with a magic sword. I summoned another cotton candy cloud and connected it to Twilight, so it would follow her around. Without her being able to see me or Anon, she wouldn't be able to guide him toward me.
"Anon!" Twilight screamed. "I can't see you!"
"I'm up here still! I'm fine, but we need to get Discord!"
"But I can't see him! I have to bring you down, or he could hurt you! You can't fly on your own!"
I started chuckling. "She's got a point, pal. If you can't fly, you can't very well stick me with your overgrown butterknife, now can you?"
"Laugh while you can, Discord," Anon snarled at me as Twilight brought him down to the ground. "But we will defeat you!"
"How are you going to do that when you can't reach me?" I asked mockingly.
"Like this!" a voice said above me, as something crashed into me with enormous speed and force. I felt the magic of a pegasus flight field shoving me down out of the sky, but dazed as I was from the blow of the pegasus slamming into my back in the first place, I couldn't concentrate. It only took seconds -- I hadn't been all that high up -- before I slammed into the ground, hard, a triumphant Rainbow Dash hovering over me.
"Plenty more where that came from, Dipcord!" she shouted down at me.
I was on the ground. Where Anon and his sword now were.
The phrase that went through my head was slightly less polite than "Oh dear," but you get the idea.
I tried to get up, but Rainbow Dash kicked me in the head. In my tumble back to the ground, I was able to see that Anon was running straight for me. This wasn't good. I was too dizzy to teleport, and if I went up Rainbow would likely attack me again. I needed to buy time.
For some mysterious reason I thought the appropriate way to do this was to summon a sword.
TRUE CONFESSION TIME: I am not a master of the art of swordsponyship. In fact I am fairly sure I'd never used one in my draconequus form for anything other than a prop. (When you walk the worlds, and sometimes find yourself in a completely different body shape in a different world, and your magic doesn't quite work the way you want it to, or possibly at all, sometimes it's convenient to have a weapon. But even then, most of my skill with a sword consisted of being able to keep myself from being skewered long enough to find a good direction to run away in.) So it was a mind-numbingly stupid idea for me to think I could take on anyone with a sword. Admittedly Anon's skill with the blade was fairly crappy, and looked mostly like moves that look good in human movies but that human swordsmen would laugh at (I said I can't use a blade well myself, not that I can't recognize good technique when I see it, and his was not good technique.) But this had to be an improvement over never having used a sword in combat while in my natural form.
Surprisingly, it was not. At the time I didn't question it. Now I realize that Anon's power must have wanted a dramatic fight. Because for a short while, I was golden. I wasn't using my chaos magic, but I felt as if the sword flowed from me as naturally as my claws might have. Like my talon extended into an invulnerable, insensate extension that wouldn't be harmed if Anon hit it with his sword, unlike my actual talon. I do have some natural aptitude for such things -- I'm good at detecting weaknesses in someone else's defenses, at identifying patterns and disrupting them to my own advantage, and I'm extremely flexible and graceful. My arms weren't much longer than Anon's and I had to manage extra body parts that he doesn't have, keeping them out of his reach, but I could bend my body in ways he couldn't match, and the principle of taunting your opponent into an ill-conceived lunge and then taking advantage of his exposure is one that translates very well from combat with claws and teeth.
In fact I thought I would easily overpower him. Then my sword broke. More precisely, he sliced it in half. I might possibly have been taunting him at the time, and his sword might have started glowing just a trifle brighter, because what I felt was harmony magic slicing through the magic of my creation, fatally weakening it in the same moment as the two physical objects clashed. His sword went through mine like mine was a butter stick. (Which might be a more effective weapon against him next time, because if you wield a butter stick just right, you can ensure that when the opponent parries and slices through your butter, the giant pat they've just sliced off goes flying into their face.)
I spent one too many split seconds staring at the broken remains of my sword, and very nearly got skewered. As it was, his sword shaved some of the thicker fur on my belly and sides. I went sideways, rolled, and conjured a shield... which cleaved in half as easily as my sword had. The only thing that saved me then was my ability to do the limbo -- I was still on the ground, and when his sword went through my shield, it would have at the very least sliced my arm off and possibly gone through my face as well if I hadn't bent my body back flat against the ground. I then uncoiled my bottom half and whacked him with my tail while he was overextended, knocking him flat to the ground.
I went straight up -- only to come straight back down again as Rainbow Dash plowed into me again and Twilight Sparkle dropped a rather large rock, somewhat reminiscent of Tom, on my lower back, below my wings but not quite to my tail yet. I do not actually have the extraneous padding that ponies, or humans, have at that particular junction, so the portions of my anatomy on the front of my body that were directly under this part of my back were crushed quite unpleasantly into the ground by the combination of the rock and my own weight. Yes, draconequui keep sensitive bits in a sheath with a bit of draconic scale covering and protecting it, under the fur, but that does not mean it was pleasant to have my hips and everything between them stomped into the dirt by the weight of the falling rock.
"Now who's laughing, Discord?" Anon shouted as he came at me again. I didn't have time to shake the rock off me and run, and I knew he could cut through anything I manifested from pure chaos. So I shaped the dirt under my paw into another shield and lifted it just in time to save myself from decapitation. The sword hit the shield... and made it fall apart into dirt again, thankfully taking some of its momentum and blunting it with mud globs so that when it hit my raised wrist, it hit like a hard, heavy stick and not like a blade. Hurt terribly, broke the bone and made me scream, but it didn't cut my arm off.
He had to take a moment to clean his blade off (on his shirt... really, this fellow is uncouth.) This gave me a chance to turn the rock on my back to butterscotch pudding, allowing me to twist away from the mad human again. I healed my broken arm, just in time because there he was coming for me again. I couldn't summon a shield made of magic, his harmonics would cut right through it. I couldn't make a quick shield out of a substance that didn't naturally want to stay in the form of a single solid object, the harmonics had disrupted the magic that held the dirt in the form of a shield. I needed something that would stick together naturally, preferably something that would slow his sword and make it encrusted enough that it couldn't disrupt my magic when it hit me.
I teleported the taffies I'd seen on the counter in Sugarcube Corner, in total desperation, and made them form into a shield just in time as he swung at me. A very thick, globby, taffy-ish shield. Much like Applejack's hooves had when she'd bucked me and I'd made myself partly taffy, the sword sank into it, and then Anon couldn't pull it back out.
"Discord! Damn you, what have you done with my sword?" He was waving it around with a gigantic glob of taffy stuck to it, making it useless as a sword.
"I fixed it!" I cackle at him. "In the sense of animal husbandry. Go ask Fluttershy what that means if you don't understand. Meanwhile I am terribly late for my clawcure at the spa! Toodles!"
I'd finally gotten my head together enough to be able to teleport. So I did. And then I started writing this journal, because it had really sunk in for the first time that I could actually die at this bozo's hands. The fact that a shallow slice against my chest had been enough to disrupt my magic temporarily the last time I'd fought him, and that his sword could go through my chaotic creations so easily by using harmony magic to destabilize whatever I created, meant that there was no guarantee I'd survive it if he actually managed to cut off my head or stab me. I was so badly shaken, in fact, that although my intent was to describe my opponent well enough that if I should fall in battle someone could pick up after me, that first journal entry actually said next to nothing about who this guy is or what form our fight had taken.
So I've come full circle, finally caught up with the start of this journal, and I should really be going down to South Amaerica to retrieve my Element of Greed from a dragon down there, but for some reason what happened in Baltimare is still bothering me tremendously and I cannot for the life of me figure out why.
I enjoyed myself. I could have stopped it at any point, and I didn't, because I wanted it. There is no sense in which anything bad, traumatic, unwanted or even embarrassing happened to me. I shouldn't be dwelling on this... oh for the love of chaos, is this because something bad happened to my character?
Let me backtrack a bit. While I was imprisoned, I would, on occasion, make up imaginary ponies. Some of them, in fact most of them, were just there to be an audience or for me to taunt, but some were... hmm, I believe the term is "self-insertion characters"? They were, essentially, pony representations of some part of my personality. I had quite a few of them, but Twister was one of my favorites, because I actually came up with a lengthy backstory for him. See, I gave him a tornado for a cutie mark (hence his name, also there have been those who have called me "the Twister" or "Mind-Twister" for what should be obvious reasons), as a representation of chaos, but then I wondered what would a unicorn do with a weather-related cutie mark. So he's a weather-working unicorn, a delightfully contradictory concept in and of itself, who grew up in Canterlot but lives in Las Pegasus, where they have a lot more facilities for non-pegasi than Cloudsdale does. And, apparently, now he has two girlfriends who work at the Palace.
Yes, I know this is pathetic. I was trapped in stone. Don't judge me.
Nothing terrible happened to me, Discord; I quite enjoyed myself. But Twister was kidnapped and gang-raped. I feel very odd about this. I allowed it to happen, because he was nothing more than a fictional character I was playing, but... now I feel as if I've done something to hurt a pony that I actually care about, my own creation. It's ridiculous; I'm well aware he's fictional and I've made him up. Nothing terrible happened to him, either, because he's not real.
But he's an avatar of me. My ponysona, if you like (one of them, anyway). If I had truly been Twister, if I'd been a mere unicorn and not the magnificent draconequus that I am... I'd have found the incident horrifying, not arousing. I like to pretend I'm not in control, or to set off enough chaos that no one is in control, including me, but to be dominated and controlled by someone else... by a pony... the very thought sickens me. And while I am hardly renowned for my empathy, I do know that this is something that most ponies don't like either, which is one of the reasons it's so much fun to inflict it on them... so why is it bothering me that these mares are doing this to stallions I don't know and don't care about, when I myself enjoy a spot of terrorizing ponies by taking their control over their lives away from time to time? My objection to rape is that it's pathetic, not that I have some sort of morality to adhere to... dear me, how could I live down the shame of subscribing to some sort of arbitrary control structure of the type ponies order their lives by? I'm completely amoral. I judge everything on whether it is fun for me or not, and whether it increases chaos and disharmony or not, and whether it does so in the long run or short run. I don't kill ponies because dead ponies aren't funny and they don't cause chaos. I don't eat meat because the same is true of all animals, whether they can talk or not; I got just as much fun out of my long-legged bunny rabbits as I did from my beautiful buffalo ballerinas, despite the fact that buffalo talk and bunnies do not.
Maybe because I've been thinking in terms of protecting ponies, being outraged that this creature from another world has warped them so thoroughly and they don't even have the freedom to know it. Maybe I'm bound to be contrary, and when my enemy is a paragon of kindness and goodness, I must be cruel, but when my enemy is wicked I must develop some virtue. I don't know. The whole thing is confusing me utterly, making me wonder if this is more of Anon's work... but Anon has no interest in turning me into some sort of hero. Whatever it is I'm feeling, it's coming from me. Somehow.
Well. Eventually perhaps it will be clear why I feel this way, or it won't, but the important thing is getting this out of my mind and following where my whims take me. And my whims are telling me that the situation with those mares is quite untenable and I will be restless unless I do something about it. So I think I'm going to go introduce a little chaos to the lives of some ladies in Baltimare, and then I'll go get my Element of Greed.
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Well done chapter! I look forward to more
You do realize that if you continue along this route, there's going to be a possibly incredible moment where all your readers give Discord some of their Schadenfreude so that he can hit Anon with the Spirits Bomb, rendering him too inebriated to fight, right?
So, is Discord becoming a real hero rather that one by default?
Good chapter! Keep it up!
Anyway, I've been thinking, that wouldn't some ponies with time related talents also feel like something is off with Anon?
Like something about him just shouldn't be? Or how some change to the timeline is focused around him?
I could almost picture it, a time traveller relatively immune to the changes introduced by Anon and the false element, and Discord reluctantly working together to set things right.
Though I'm sure whatever direction your story actually takes should be good too.
Huh, I just had an interesting thought
As you said, Anon's unconscious mind is creating these rapists waitresses. The Harmonic magic of Equestria itself knows that this is wrong. Maybe the Harmonic magic is a sentient being, and is identifying Anon as a villain, the same way they identified Discord, Tirek, and Nightmare Moon. But instead of eternal night, or sucking up all the magic to become powerful, Anon is figuratively fucking with the reality of Equestria, nay, the reality of the whole planet, and since the Harmonic magic can't use the Elements of Harmony against him, because he's literally fucking them, the only being the Harmonic magic can use to defeat him is the only being that realizes Anon isn't a hero, thereby turning Discord into a true hero.
Which is why he's bothered about his ponysona and other stallions getting gang-raped, and being laughed at when trying to report it, that's the Harmonic magic affecting him, turning him into a hero.
Of course, this is all just a theory.
Is that a reference to the Mandelbrot Set/some similar fractal?
How could this Chapter not have a lot of comments already?...too soon? Ah well, great chapter nonetheless.
I think this might even possibly be worse than the gender imbalance thing, assuming that the imbalance was caused by transforming the stallions rather than disappearing them. Because when you think about it, if there were no rapists before, and there are now, then what Anon's done is turn normal ponies into rapists just so that rapists could exist.
The possibility of ponies getting back to normal after this and having to live with possible gender dysphoria or radically altered relationships because of the memories of their altered lives is already bad. But imagine one of these ordinary ponies who were turned into this coming back from Anon's effects and having that on their conscience. Suicide rates are gonna skyrocket after Anon's defeat if that's the case. At the very least, Equestria's gonna have to build a whole lot more rehab centres before this is through.
I think Discord's a Reality Troll.
How annoyingly hip ... literally. It's on his hip.
To be fair, right now Discord telling romans a clef featuring them is the least of their problems ... though it is funny the way in which what he's saying is literally true. (Female, sisters, friends at least at one time, and "work at the palace.")
That's a very sad line. The more so because I'm not sure Discord realizes just how sad it is.
Indeed. Since reality shifted, leaving a heck of a lot of mares in a state of more or less constant frustration. That's a particularly dangerous little rape club, too, given that they're in a job which means that they are in regular contact with strangers and in a position to slip them potions.
Magical rape drugs are very dangerous, more so than the equivalent in our society. In fact, I'm not entirely sure we'd recognize them as "rape drugs," though they certainly would be -- I once had a higher respect for human intelligence, but the past two decades have left me cynical on the topic of our ability to swiftly adapt to the cultural, moral and jurisprudential implications of technological change.
The potential already exists in canon Equestria, but the emphasis on Harmony and the fact that the Ponies average less individually aggressive reduces the potential for such crimes. One of the problems my Twilight has in An Epistolary Legal Consultation Between Princesses is that flat-out stranger rape is a very rare crime in Equestria, sufficiently-so that she doesn't have all that much precedent of which she is aware to go on. I have her writing to Luna and asking her if she's familiar with such crimes, and Luna replying that they were much more common in the days before Equestria was united (because there was a lot of chaotic warfare).
Incidentally, I have a reason specific to my continuity why one crime Discord really does not like to commit is direct rape, which I'll reveal before the end of Divine Jealousy and the Voice of Reason. It has to do with the precise nature of the influence that Discord's old personality of Dissy has over his current dominant personality.
That's a good point. Ponies canonically can get violently angry at other Ponies, and in the case of a strong Pony or one with a dangerous implement to hand suddenly losing his temper (and it would probably be more stallions than mares who would do this, in part due to the strength difference), second-degree murder would certainly be easy enough that it must happen often enough to be of public concern. This would be yet another reason why the Equestrian ideal of stallionhood definitely includes being even-tempered (all of the stallions presented in-show as being sexually appealing to sympathetic mare characters have had non-violent or at most very self-controlled capabilities for violence.
Big Mac, Flash Sentry and Shining Armor are both capable of violence (Flash and Shining are military stallions) but clearly only in self-defense, defense of loved ones or performance of duty; Cheese Sandwich and Trenderhoof are social manipulators rather than fighters; Bulk Biceps is a big sweetie; and even Blueblood strikes me as rude, not violent). Of the non-Pony love interests, Spike is a Dragon but a really nice Dragon. In fact, Discord himself is the only violent love interest for any sympathetic mare in canon, and he's much more likely to use transformation and mind control magic than direct physical aggression when he gets mad.
I caught that Discord was repeating the routine with the exploding chocolate milk step-by-step, but failed to grasp that this meant he was within Anon's close personal influence at that moment. Well done!
This is also OOC for Twilight, and I wager intentionally-so on your part. Twilight rarely panics in a truly-dangerous situation -- she has Nerves of Steel when the going gets tough (I used this significantly in both Nightmares Are Tragic (where Luna recognized this as a characteristic of Dusk Skyshine, helping her to realize the connection Twilight had with her earlier incarnation's husband) and Dragonshyness (where Twilight realizes from her own fear of Red Haze that she's being affected by the Dragon's magic). Part of the humor of her character is that she then becomes a Nervous Wreck over minor issues; the same Pony can calmly face down a raging manticore one moment, and panic over what she should do at a dance.
But of course Anon's fantasy requires that Twilight be psychologically-dependent on him, both from the point of view of playing the Distressed Damsel and from the point of view of being terrified beyond the ability to think clearly at any threat to Anon. This melodramatizes the fact that he is her True Love, etc. etc. etc. (Anon assumes that one succumbs to the stress when one's True Love is threatened; he misses that part of Twilight's magnificence is that she tends to go icy-cold and calculating when things get really dangerous for herself or loved ones -- or maybe he doesn't, since he probably feels threatened by magnificence in others). And Anon's writing this part of the story.
Hey, it worked!
In Rainbow's defense, that's actually not a bad attack. It's just that she most famously tried it against a kaiju-sized Dragon, who was too big and tough to more than annoy that way. Her plan to do exactly this to Discord in Divine Jealousy wasn't so bad, though if Discord wasn't taken unawares (or under the influence of a hostile reality-warper of greater power than Pinkie Pie) it still wouldn't have worked because Discord could have dodged or parried it in many different ways, both magical and physical. In fact her main defense against my Discord is that he likes her and likes playing with her, hence would not want to do anything lethal to her. But that's kind of a humiliating realization for Rainbow Dash to make, so she doesn't.
Right -- Anon's doing all the showy sweeps and dramatic thrusts which in a real fight would be overcommitment and would get one quickly defeated by any skilled opponent. But then Anon knows nothing about actual swordfighting; he's only seen TV shows and movies. And Discord's not that skilled a fencer, and in any case is having his own skill dialed down to "just good enough to make his defeat by me dramatic" by Anon.
He's lucky Anon didn't make him cry out "No! This cannot be!" at that moment.
Yeah. Rapist waitresses can really cut into your Zagat ratings!
Whoa -- until I read that, I didn't realize that the female rape gangs were a direct (rather than indirect) consequence of Anon's Reality Warping.
And you're right! I've noticed that, I even read a fanfic in which somepony physically overpowers Spike by hitting him on the head and tying him up in order to rape him, which should be close to impossible given Spike's many physical advantages over a Pony.
An interesting side effect to society... I mean, it makes sense that a denial of partners in a species without a roughly 50/50 gender split would result in more encounters like that as sexual frustrations rise.
Part of me wonders what would happen if Discord simply tried to explain things to the Mane 6 or maybe the princesses... No magic or mind-bending... Just an explanation and any natural changes that occur... I mean the Mane 6 aren't idiots, at least not when Anon's not around. If Discord told them the truth about Anon's powers and how he's affected the world, well I'd give some of the elements decent chances to listen to him. At least Fluttershy who would emphasize with Discord and Twilight who's logical enough to realize Discord admitting to being frightened of Anon's power would be an excellent indicator of just how dangerous Anon is _if_ Discord's not lying. And if Twilight realizes that, she'd want to test it for herself, because the implications of what Anon has done are absolutely terrifying. If she finds they're true something would _need_ to be done about Anon, but she can't talk to Anon to test this... Especially if it ends up rewriting any of her conclusions and gasp tainting the data. Her meticulous and OCD nature would force her to keep her musings secret hopefully, and if she does find the truth then Discord suddenly has a new and very powerful ally.
5187700 It sounds good, but nopony would believe him
Wait, is that form Discord took the one he used to sneak up on Tirek? Speaking of which, what has happened to him anyway? Has Anon's power, not knowing of his existence, totally skipped out on Tirek, or has something happened to him too?
Suspiciously specific.
I can totally picture Discord wielding a sandwich-sword against an Integral symbol.
Aaaand we're reminded that this is Discord, whose problem with rape isn't that it's horrible, but that it's bland. But at least it's starting to bother him. Looks like, if he gets through this, he'd reforming himself.
Anon was... okay, for a little idiot that was a pretty well-laid trap. And due to Anon's aura Discord doesn't even consider snapping his talons and... doing something useful like teleporting away. At least he eventually does.
I've never seen any story where Discord fights with a sword. Bwa?
5187718
I think the bigger issue is Discord has too big an ego to consider doing that yet actually. It doesn't really matter if no one outright believes him, because the horrifying implications of what it would mean if Discord was right would at the least warrant looking into to make sure it's not the case. Again though, only Twilight and probably the Princesses would be able to pick up on the greater implications of the great and mighty Discord claiming these things if such an explanation occurred. When you get a warning of a threat so big the current biggest threat is warning you about it because of how threatening it is to him? That should set off warning bells even if the "bigger threat" is on your side.
5187724
Um... yes? Discord's a total hypocrite. He almost comes out and admits to it in a few places, where he basically says something to the effect of "I'm the only one who should have abilities like this". They're his toys and no one else should be allowed to play with them, at least in ways that Discord disapproves of.
But I think he's right that he's the lesser of two evils, because everyone knows Discord is a villain and that he mucks with ponies' heads. No one will try to stop Anon because everyone thinks he's a hero and no one knows there's mind control involved. I am pretty clear on the concept that Discord's a villain, though; I mean he just went off on a rant about how he can't possibly restrain himself with an ordered concept like morality. He doesn't even want to be a hero. Circumstances are pushing him in that direction, though.
(I'd ask you if there are seriously people who think Celestia's tactics are equivalent to Discord's mind control shenanigans, except sadly I know better. Of course Celestia does not mind control people; she's a very skilled manipulator, but she doesn't use magic or any violation of anyone's mind to get what she wants, and what she wants is almost always the good of all Equestria, or secondarily maybe the good of the pony she's manipulating.)
5187724
It depends on what you mean by hypocritical...
Discord's stance is based on how the changes he and Anon makes occur. Discord's changes are not retroactive. That is, as powerful as Discord is, he only warps the present. He may make you think you're a dog instead of a pony, but it doesn't change the fact that you still were a pony at one point and could revert to that state again since it previously existed.
Anon seems to change things retroactively... Which is much more dangerous and much more permanent... Anon wouldn't make a pony brainwash a pony into thinking it's a dog... He'd alter present and past so that the pony _always thought it was a dog_.
When Discord brainwashes ponies, their friends and loved ones still know who they are and were... When Anon changes them it isn't even really brainwashing... All the friends and family and cherished memories that pony had disappear as if they'd never existed. Events in the past alter to fit the idea that the pony in question always thought he was a dog, not only affecting the dog pony but his friends and family.
It is a much more horrifying fate... There is no evidence on the victim itself that they've changed because they're not really changed are they? The entire universe's past is rewritten to make the truth a lie and a lie the truth... The only reason Discord knows anythings wrong at all is his statue provided protection from it in _one_ instance... And even then he's not immune.
5187436
It could also lead to the only time in the history of fiction that a rape victim comforting their rapist would actually be a scene that fit into the story without ruining it.
5187799
I guess we cant use the heavy sarcasm "our hero" quote, then.
5187787 He could have too big of an ego. Or it could be that he's so used to being hated, feared, and seen as a pure evil that he doesn't even want to try
5188102
Well, the story is called "Not the Hero".
great loss,
And endless strife against a god,
Once avatar of chaos now just a fool.
Could it be that death is the only thing that awaits .
Or will he stand victorious,
Will there be at least be remembrance.
5188166
It's probably a bit of both actually. His inflated ego may have been there to begin with and just not as big a deal. Then whatever happened in that vague mysterious past that's been referenced a time or two (in this story that is) happened and ponies began to fear him which could have inflated his ego as a defensive mechanism. That is, to make up for everyone else fearing and hating him he just said screw them and started loving whatever he did that much more to avoid thinking about their reactions.
Anyways, on a different tangent... I wonder if Discord realizes how dangerous gathering the so called Elements of Chaos might be... I mean... Anon works his changes subconciously, and I think (but can't be positive) he has a tendency to mold his changes in such a way that it matches his preconceptions from the show (Hence why Discord sticks to his old tricks from Return of Harmony and becomes a cliche evil villain around Anon. He's literally conforming to Anon's misconception that he's a cliche villain from a little kid's show...). If that's the case, and Anon's changes are guided by what he percieves to be a good story... Well what happens when he learns about the Elements of Chaos? If there's one for every Element... And Anon trully believes the Element of Protection is an Element of Harmony... Well... His subconcious may just attempt to even the field and create an Antithesis to the Element of Protection "because that's how the story should go"... Anon, despite how terrifying his powers are, is doing all of this by accident. Anon could be a decent guy, and for all we know he'd be horrified to learn what he's doing... He'd probably try to reign in his powers then because as he sees it he's the hero... When and if the Antithesis of Protection is created? If it follows what Anon pictures as a good story, then it'll generate a mirror to Anon, as in someone with all his powers _including_ the ones he doesn't know about. This person is probably malevolent, intent on destroying everything given how he pictures Discord, and, most importantly, probably stronger than Anon himself because that's how the Elements of Chaos work according to what we've been told... They grant individuals incredible power, but are worthless when all together... In other words Anon might create something he can't handle that's worse than either him or Discord.
Dear survivors of the Anoncalypse,
I never thought this could happen to me...
What does the Element of Rage look like, anyway? Stone sphere, costume jewelery, can of whipped cream with an angry face?
The idea of magical potions only working for specific species is one I've never seen before. Fascinating idea, that. In a world like this one, where magic's so closely tied in with biology that you can barely wedge a playing card between them, it makes sense.
Discord's disquiet is fascinating. You may have found a way to get him to reform himself, provided he ever takes a look in the metaphorical mirror. (Highly unlikely, I know, but still.) And I have to like how a character you're upset over is getting upset over one his characters. Symbolic recursion always entertains me.
Oh, Discord. Just because your value system is markedly different from ponies' doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
Of course, it's entirely in his nature to contradict himself. Consistency is the hobgoblin of lesser minds.
Eagerly looking forward to more.
5187750
That's the idea
5188308
Except that in stories, the GOOD GUY always wins. He'd probably pull out a never-before-hinted-at superpower out of his ass and use it to annihilate Discord (not kill: annihilate. Because even though by and large they mean the same thing, only bad guys kill).
You know, right now I'm feeling kinda like Discord, but on a different issue.
For all we know, Anon could be a perfectly good guy-a tad deluded, a bit dim, but fundamentally good-but I can't help but hate him.
Even though I know that he'd be horrified if he knew what changes his presence wreaks, and that very, very little of this is his direct fault...I still hate him.
I wonder why.
5188461
Very true except for one caveat that can make a huge difference in this case. Anon isn't part of a story, or rather the universe expressed in this story is supposed to exist as if it wasn't a story, hence why Anon messing with reality to "make himself the hero" is a problem. Ignoring the fact that we know this is just a story, inside their universe it should't be guarenteed to play out as a story and Anon can only get away with making it conform to his ideas of one _because_ there is no one to counter balance and stop him. The creation of someone with all of his powers who's malevolent would create that counter balance.
In other words, if Anon creates an Antithesis to Protection to "make the story better" he no longer has anywhere near as much control in events because both his and his nemesis' desires are suddenly overwriting reality and contradicting each other. Anything Anon wants, his antithesis certainly wouldn't want and vice versa, so all other things being equal they cancel each other out.
There's a slight problem with that though... Assuming Anon's changes draw on what makes a good story then there are several ways his Antithesis could be created stronger than him, thus effectively screwing everyone over.
First, Hero's need to grow. It's what defines a hero in a story. Growing and overcoming what they were to weak to do before.
Second, Murphy's Law. That ones self-explanitory.
Third, The natural laws of the universe. If the Elements of Chaos are naturally stronger individually than their corresponding Element of Harmony then his Antithesis could end up stronger than Anon by default without any further modifications to "make the story better"
5188624
Man, this is why I hate and love reality warpers. Impossible to deal with, even for themselves (although the SCP universe comes close. Then again, their idea of "dealing with it" is a high velocity sniper round in the head).
5187264 is on to something.
But I think there's also a good reason Discord should be worried about the rape waitresses giving him extra power, strictly in the self-preservation sense. It's a trap. It's already well established that Anon is reality-warping, more powerful than Discord, and trying to push him into the role of being the big villain for Anon to defeat. The more that Discord draws from power sources that Anon is explicitly generating for him (even if that's being done subconsciously), the more he's buying into Anon's narrative, and we already know what's going to happen then.
Which makes me realize: The only way he has to avoid that is, essentially, not being Discord. Moderating himself. His current discomfort is a vague recognition that circumstances require him to do something which isn't purely for personal pleasure. His insistence that he's standing on the principle of rape being boring does have something to it, but I think he's at least partially lying to himself; the fact that he's standing on that principle means that he's caring about what happens to others, because that's what he has to do to avoid being whammied.
How ironic that breaking character (Anon's being subconscious, and Discord's being conscious) is not only what's threatening Equestria but also what's going to save it.
5187700
And that's exactly the problem. As soon as he steps in a vaguely defined radius of them, they succumb to his influence.
Since to convince any of them, they'd have to do quite a bit of research, probably staying in the same place for a couple of hours...yeah, he'd probably pop up asking why they didn't show up for the usual mid-afternoon orgy.
And this discounts the fact that is ability isn't even strictly limited by space! Discord has remarked on the fact that the more he holds off on attacking him, the more he starts to get angry at him and the dumber he gets-meaning they'd have to fight a rising (and rising...and rising) urge to go cuddle him for every minute they're not in his presence.
5188670
They should still be able to resist to some degree though, much like Discord, as long as they conform to Anon's expectations enough that his powers don't actively seek them out. The example I'll use for this because I was rather shocked it didn't come up in today's chapter. Did you notice they used Rarity as the reason why they knew Discord was coming and not Fluttershy? As in, it may be possible that Fluttershy didn't mention her talk with Discord? If they all were completely under Anon's influence, then I'm willing to bet Fluttershy wouldn't have been anywhere near as understanding, but it seems like she kept her discussion with Discord private to respect the fact that he didn't wipe her memories.
EDIT: Ignore the deleted comment/double submit. My mouse has this issue where it double clicks so fast it double submits.
What does jejune mean?
FanOfMostEverything asks a good question. What do the Elements of Disharmony look like? If you don't know, then please just tell me.
5188624 5188461
The individual Elements of Disharmony are stronger than the individual Elements of Harmony, yes, but because they can't effectively work together, they lose out.
As Discord has pointed out, "protection" is not really an aspect of Harmony as so-presented to us because, as he stated, it is not an equal transaction; kindness, generosity, etc. can always be returned in equal by honesty, loyalty, and such, but protection cannot. Rarity is capable of being as honest as Applejack, or as kind as Fluttershy, but needing protection means that she is herself incapable of providing that same protection to others.
If there is an Element that is an antithesis to Protection, it would probably not actually be all that terrible; it's primary function would undoubtedly be to get the other Elements of Disharmony to work together, so that they could actually level the playing field. Knowing Anon, though, it would probably be the Element of Tyranny or something, which is not really even analogous to protection in any way (seriously. Most tyrants are fine with oppressing their own subjects, but as soon as someone else comes in to try and do the same thing, they will fight to protect what is "theirs" pretty viciously; most serfs back in the day were fine with living under a tyrant because it meant they were afforded protection from bandits and thugs), because Anon is an idiot.
5188843 naive, simplistic, and superficial.
I know that this is mocking a fic, I don't remember its name.
5187965
And isn't that a depressing thought?
5188624
What you're kind of missing out on is that Anon wouldn't need to create an antithesis for himself because according to Discord, there are already seven Elements of Disharmony. Selfishness, Rage, Cruelty, Deception, Greed, Hatred and Arrogance. Loyalty, Laughter, Kindness, Honesty and Generosity line up to the first few, and that leaves Hatred to oppose Magic if Magic is meant to express friendship in general, and Arrogance to be Anon's opposite number. Which is kind of funny, when you think about it, and would probably play perfectly into his fantasy, since it implies that Anon's element encompasses humility in some respect.
Almost too perfectly in fact. It kind of makes you wonder if there really were always seven Elements of Disharmony for the reasons that Discord gave, or if they're this way because Anon actually wants an Elements of Disharmony story and Discord doesn't remember otherwise.
5189649
Wait! He said there are 7 instead of 6?!? Didn't remember that, but that's perfect! Anti-elements are already a huge kind of trope, and I was a little surprised Discord was discussing them seriously given this story seems to poke fun at stuff like that, but what if Anon created the Elements of Chaos when he created the Element of Protection? I mean if Discord was avoiding Anon and trying to figure out how to deal with him, then Anon might of assumed he was planning something big, and although that was kind Discord's plan in that he doesn't want a direct confrontation but that doesn't mean Anon might not be subtlely altering history to set up that showdown already! Oh my gosh... So much to speculate on. That's what I love about this story. It's deliciously vague enough in certain places. Just enough to keep you speculating, but it still provides a lot of much needed information. But know I have to wonder how much of that information is reliable now that Discord is no longer in stone and no longer immune to Anon. It's absolutely wonderful!
5189831
See, I don't think that's what was done here. The way Discord talks about them, the Elements of Disharmony seem to be an invention of a previous chaos avatar that he is just aware of and able to gather up and choose bearers for again because they're one of the many things he inherited with the job. That sounds like it's pretty consistent with the backstory of Alara's Discord.
And as we've already established, Anon just watches the show. He doesn't know anything about Equestria that wasn't in FiM, so it's very unlikely that he knows how the avatars work. If the Elements of Disharmony didn't already exist, he probably would've made Discord himself invent them, rather than inserting them into the backstory of this world through historical figures that he'd have no way of knowing existed. And if the Elements of Disharmony were all his idea, as was Discord using them against him, then Discord wouldn't already hold the opinion that they're dumb as a concept.
Like I said, it's possible that Discord using them against Anon and that there being seven bearers for them is Anon's work, but the Elements of Disharmony must have already existed in this world, otherwise a lot of things don't make sense.
5189924
Hmm... Fair enough.
Does an antihero still qualify as a hero? Cause Discord seems to be going in that direction to me..
5189279 This story is supposed to mock a bunch of different types of story's like SeventhElement!stories and bad HiE fics. Not that it is just a mock fic but the mocking is a part of it.
5189279
It's called Every HiE Fic In Which The Human Main Character Turns Out To Be The Seventh Element Of Harmony Or Has Sex With One Or More Of The Mane Six Or Both.
In other words it's mocking a lot of different fics. I'm being polite and not mentioning any of them by name.
5189924
The Elements of Disharmony were originally going to appear in a story that sporked the concept of the Elements of Disharmony (Chaos, whatever) called "Why There Are No Elements Of Disharmony" in which Discord was going to make the things and then discover that if you put six disharmonious entities together, they get nothing done except bickering.
And then I had a revelation that that is the point to disharmony. The use that disharmony is to a society is to be a monkeywrench, to keep power from concentrating too heavily, to ensure the security of minorities and dissenters. (This is why Discord claims he would have named them things like Rugged Individualism.) Disharmony can't get along with anything; that's exactly what it's for. So I had the idea of there being six entities which, individually, have a sixth of Discord's full power, but when you put them together they nullify themselves (originally it was a plan to take away Discord's power without either losing the role of the chaos avatar or letting it go to someone else.)
And then I decided to scrap that in favor of them already existing so I could use them in this. I'm not sporking them exactly, but I'm invoking the trope in a story that exists to mock tropes because it seems like a good venue to demonstrate why the usual take on the concept doesn't work and what they would actually be useful for. But I couldn't decide on which six vices to choose, and then I realized, why would disharmony be in harmony with harmony? Of course disharmony should not match up precisely. So I picked seven because in traditional Judeo-Christian mythology, seven is a holy number and six is evil; therefore, in a mythos where six is the sacred number, I decided to make seven its antithesis. :-) (That's a commentary on the arbitrariness of assigning numbers to good or evil.) Six is 2 x 3 or 3 x 2, combinations of powerful numbers working in sync; seven's a prime, so it seemed like a good representation of disharmony if six is harmony.
So yes, there have always been seven Elements of Disharmony because they are not supposed to line up. "Protection" is not in fact an Element of Harmony at all; its principle belongs to a different power, one that made a lot more crystals than either the Tree or the chaos avatars. Those who follow my stories in general can probably guess from this where Protection really belongs and what kind of principle it's an Element of.
Anon is not going to try to make Discord make a seventh element because by the time he finds out there's such a thing as Elements of Disharmony in the first place, he'll know there are seven of them. He may, however, try to pressure Discord into invoking all seven. Discord doesn't need all seven of them because they don't work as a group, and some of them, he doesn't even like (his species was driven to the point of extinction by the windigos; Discord has no use for hatred, in general. Anger, yes, he likes that, but on this planet, hatred kills, and that's why he was orphaned and left the last survivor of his kind at the age of five.) Anon doesn't know Discord's backstory and would not understand the philosophical reasoning by which Discord does not need to bring in all seven, so if Discord suddenly starts thinking it'd be a good idea to have the whole set in play, that would likely be Anon at work.
5188857
I need a Sombra emote:
CRYSSSSTAAAALSSSSS
5190782 I think I saw one were it was the same exact thing armor etc.
5188467
That's kind of my feeling about the guy.
Anon is based on characters repeatedly invented by a friend of mine in ten years of roleplaying. My friend was a decent guy, overall, if a bit dim, but his characters made me want a barf bag, frequently. This was a guy who should never ever ever ever have any of his personal power fantasies come to life.
He's also based on various Gary Stus from this site, but there's a real human being in there too. One I actually had sympathy for in real life, and yet, I knew that his self-inserts would be so phenomenally destructive to a realistic narrative that one could only exist by warping reality to make it all about himself.
Loving this fic so far. It quickly jumped up to the top ranks of favorite fics. Aside from the skewering for Gary Stu in Equestria tropes, I like depth to Discord's character and information theory explanations of the mechanics of magic, with the subtle flavors of chaos like high complexity vs entropy.
Question: I see lots of backstory being alluded to regarding Discord, Celestia, and Luna. Is this in a shared universe with some other fics I'm not aware of?
5190873
Do you meant to imply that protection is the domain of Matrisse? I can see how that works, it being an orderly concept and all, but I'm not sure what exactly that means in the context of Anon. Would Anon's use of protection when it should belong to Matrisse be similar to the Tree's use of laughter when it should belong to chaos?
5187750
Tirek is probably still wandering around, really really weak and devouring the magic of manticore cubs and cockatrice eggs to get himself up to "feeble old man" level. This story began right before the Canterlot Wedding, and the Crystal Empire hasn't returned yet. And yes, Twister is the form Discord used to sneak up on Tirek.
I can't imagine why he thought of that particular dealbreaker. :-)
I've seen like four of them. One was actually fairly good, but involved Discord and the alicorns having actually been humans who came through a portal to Equestria centuries ago and were transformed by magic, so he had some excuse for why he'd know how to do it, and we saw him doing it in his human form. All the others sucked. Discord would pick up a sword and use it if his magic wasn't available, because claws are awesome but do leave your arm vulnerable, but if he has his magic, he ought to be using his magic. Not a sword. Seriously.