Who am I? Why, I'm just a passing through Kamen Rider... Got it memorized?
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Twilight has worked herself clear to the point of exhaustion in order to set up The Grand Equestrian Summit in Canterlot. After she collapses, Spike is tasked by Cadence with the essential mission of making sure Twilight isn't disturbed while she catches up on the sleep she's missed.
When a herd of ponies come knocking at Twilight's door though, it falls to Spike to deal with them.
So, naturally, he does the smart thing and solves everything.
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I read this just after watching the episode, and I really wish that it had played out more like this in the show. This is so much more true to the character of Spike and it was a delight to read, thank you for writing this.
pre14.deviantart.net/9983/th/pre/f/2015/050/9/3/spike_rarity_splash_by_hillbe-d8iq6be.jpg
Damn you should write for DHX ! Spike thanks you.
How come you don't work for Hasbro?
Now this is amazing. Finally, something that portrays Spike as he should be.
He's lived with Twilight long enough to know these things; I'm glad to see that people recognise it.
Question: How is it that the fans of MLP can write better Spike episodes than the people who get paid for it?
Answer: The fans aren't lazy and actually sit down and think outside the box on how to make Spike work. And not come up with weak excuses.
Always good to see Spike getting the treatment he deserves. Love this piece.
Look, let me level with you, Petty (what? You told me to call you that
). I get it. I thought the episode Princess Spike was incredibly contrived, too. I don't blame you for writing a "How It Should've Ended" story. But, um, this retelling of the story doesn't really work, either. Why? Because there is no story. 
The problems with the episode cannot be solved simply by, uh, solving the problems of the episode. I know, it sounds confusing. But hear me out. Stories need conflicts in order to be interesting. This rewrite eliminates the conflict entirely. That doesn't make for a good story, mate. And it certainly wouldn't make for a good episode.
The episode had some good ideas; they just botched the execution by making everything so contrived. If you want to retell the episode in a way that would make it good, that's what you should be focusing on.
This is VERY impressive. I may not have seen the real episode, but this is surely 10,000 times better! Seriously, whoever says Spike is meant to be the Charlie Brown of MLP:FiM needs to read this and be reminded that Spike is capable of amazing things. The series, sadly, has yet to extend on this.
I can get a writer that actually likes Spike make in episode for him that would a step in the right duration.
6119202
Actually I do have a way you can punish me
Really ?
Ya, this book will tell you a great way to punish me. ( Handed her a altered copy of 50 shades of Grey. All the kinky stuff but none of the characters names or any of the other scenes.)Just read this and do what's in the book
. That's Spike
No thank you Twilight.
...
...........
......................
Someone get this fellow a spot on the writing team for any and all future Spike episodes. Effective immediately.
Yo, DHX writers. THIS is how you write Spike in a lead role! Keep that in mind next time you write a Spike episode.
Speaking as someone who didn't mind the episode as much as others, I still really love this.
6119695 Sorry I couldn't stop myself, it was just to easy. Also punish and Twilight's love of books it's just to fitting. Someone should so make a fic of that. Twilight being a position of power and so having issues. And Spike being her younger assistant it would just a fitting parody.
There is a problem with TV plots in that they demand drama wherein someone makes a mistake and has to realize their mistake and yadda yadda drama happens. But still, even though "Princess Spike" was far from the worst "Spike episodes," it could have been better. At least a few pages out of your book from this story could have taken a mediocre episode and made it a really decent one.
This......this was beautiful.
6118196 I second that.
Actually, I think Spike did an amazing job considering. As at best, Spike is barely into his teen-equivilent and may be actually a child, depending on where you personally peg his age - and he was doing an adult's job.
The only results of what he did we were shown are the ones that went wrong - and the whole polo-ball-tree-mains-burst directly into the wosrt possible windows like it was guided by Discord (75% suspect it was...) - couldn't possibly have been predicted; it's the sort of "mistake" a great many people would have made[1]. I am pretty sure that of the other Mane Six, Dash, Fluttershy and Pinkie Pie would likely have done less well, and I can see Rarity and AJ cracking a bit under the strain. (And I also noted that Spike ony went Mad With Power only after he'd basically done all the ground work.
The episode blaming him was rather unfair, I thought.
Especially, as - as you rightly point out here - ponies are so damned childish sometimes. It says something that the dragon kid/early teen was actually acting generally more mature than the preported adults...
I thus thought that, contrary to what the episode SAID, what it SHOWED was Spike doing a pretty bang up job as #1 Assisitant, and only really stumbled because of ridiculously contrived circumstances (Discord's still bitter Spike was instrumental in undiscording Twilight to beat him, aint' he...?), the fact those delegates were arguably less mature than the CMC and the apparent pony-herd mentality to form mobs at the drop of a hat. (As everyone was happy - except for those first two morons two interpreted "princess says share" as "shout like market vendors" - until the Ridiculous Incident, where upon they formed a mob because of that incident.)
And also that every day, Spike has to struggle against his inner dragon-greed and sometimes slips up without even realising it, which is kinda sibering if you think about it.
So, give him a year or two and a touch more experience - and you will absolutely get this story.
Apropros of nothing, I am rather taken by Skywriter's suggestion that this episode suggests - as does the story here - that Cadance and Spike have a sort of Celestia/Twilight relationship, in that she's being his (unofficial) personal student. Which is actually all kinds of awesome. Rather like Cadance herself.
[1]And honestly, I am more inclined to question why such an absolutely slap-dash approach was being taken by the work organisers, in both cases sending a single pony to do what should be a job for team - bare minimum two - you don't safely attempt to fell trees in a populated area without at least one other pair of eyes to hand. And why the lazy-arse sewer worker didn't even make some sort of attempt to put some sort of temporary jackets over the leaky water pipe.
6118585
Truer words have never been spoken
This person needs to be on the show's writing team, stat! This is amazing!
I agree with 6119197 on pretty much all of his points. If this was in the episode Princess Spike, people wouldn't dislike it for being contrived, they would dislike it for being boring and contrived.
Yes, the problems Spike faced in the episode had easy solutions, and the conflict as a whole could have been done much better, but at least Princess Spike had a conflict. Here, nothing.
Not only is there no conflict, there's really nothing of interest. The story you chose to tell is primarily exposition through Cadance's point of view about how Spike easily succeeds at the challenges thrown at him. Not to mention random characters appear out of nowhere to give him aid. If that had been the episode, I have no doubt most would consider it the worst of the show.
What's more, the way you chose to present Spike's character is honestly pretty bad. In the episode, he comes up against obstacles he's never really faced before, such as resolving disputes and handling angry mobs. For a kid, that would be a tough challenge. Here? Spike easily and expertly shoots down all the problems in his way. He faces no difficulties, no setbacks, and nothing all that compelling. He's written more in line with a Gary Stu character rather than Spike.
I don't doubt that you had good intentions, but in my opinion this execution was worse than the episode you were trying to fix.
6121277 it his one of the worst episode of the show, because it's about Spike and a sleeping pony princess
And nobody care about spike, not even spike himself
*whistles and walks to episode*
*grabs and replaces with this story*
In my eyes, this is canon.
6121277 But the problems had simple solutions. Someone comes to Princess Twilight because someone took their seat. Anyone at all would ask why they're coming to the Princess for that. And then someone comes up trying to lord over the princess and Spike sets him straight--which happens to lead to setting everyone straight in the process. Any fear of the mob was replaced by anger, and that anger shut up the mob such that Spike had nothing to fear any more.
Perhaps the guards were contrived, but really they had little to no effect on what would have happened other than providing exposition for Cadence. Not all stories need a conflict. This is an exposition that shows that the conflict in Princess Spike would never have existed in the first place, and that is what makes it what it is.
6121838 Here's the thing though, not all the problems were as easy to solve as a pony losing his seat. One of the issues was a scheduling conflict between two ponies, and I don't know if you've ever worked on scheduling a convention but when something like that happens it's a very difficult to solve, especially during something as booked as the Summit.
Not to mention the sheer amount of ponies that had problems can easily become overwhelming, especially when they form a mob. And even in the episode Spike had an outburst or two and that didn't shut them up. Even so, just angrily yelling wouldn't make any of the problems go away.
Every book ever published has a conflict. Every movie ever made has a conflict. Every episode of every TV show has a conflict. It doesn't really matter how big it is, conflict is a driving force behind things happening. Look up The Hero's Journey sometime. Maybe you'd be fine with a story that doesn't have any amount of conflict at all, but I find it boring. Exceedingly so.
This fic is just Cadance walking around, learning from some random ponies that nothing went wrong, getting a brief flashback of nothing going wrong, and then being told by Spike that nothing went wrong. If you like it, fine. You have a right to your opinion, and your opinion is as valid as everyone elses. My opinion is that this was boring and doesn't fix the episode.
6121949 This assumes that the scheduling conflict was more than a one-time event. In the episode, when the mob came up to Spike, they were mostly coming up thanks to the trouble with the hall. Other than that, the scheduling conflict is said to have been solved inanely (but only inanely because of a misinterpretation), but that's the extent of the conflicts mentioned.
Allow me to clarify my point about conflict. I mentioned that this was an exposition--it was an exposition in story form. It's basically telling a story of a story being told. A story is a narrative, and a narrative does not require a conflict. A narrative simply narrates. Perhaps an exposition is boring to you--that's fine. But since it is told as an exposition, it is not boring as one--unless you don't like expositions. And if you don't like expositions, then you can say that it was boring because it was an exposition, but not that it was boring because it was not a story.
Typo spotted.
I'd love to see a sequel that is just Spearmint blowing Sapphire Quartz's mind with stories about Sir Spike the Brave and Glorious as a hatchling, running around chewing on random gems and setting things on fire.
In the news: DHX hires community member PoisonClaw as their latest writer for the hit animation series "My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic"
...Someone, get this guy into the staff team. Now.
6122064
While I appreciate you clarifying your points a little more, I feel I must rebuttal again. First of all, yes, in the episode the mob did come mostly due to the hall getting flooded. However, in this story there was also a mob, despite the flooding never occurring. This was the mob I was mostly referring to, and while I doubt all of their problems were scheduling based, it is very likely that lots of them had serious and legitimate problems. Aside from the one guy who lost his seat, no other problems were expanded upon and merely referred to as "urgent business", which they very well could have been. In fact, by shutting all of those ponies down, Spike allowed several problems to go completely unsolved, which could make a pretty awful disaster in and of itself.
Regarding the exposition, I'm not just saying that this fic was boring, I'm saying that the sequence of events the author implied about how the episode should have turned out would have been boring. The author is basically stating, through this fanfic, that Spike should have easily brushed off all the problems thrown at him without breaking a sweat. If Princess Spike had just been twenty-two minutes of Spike easily overcoming obstacles, it would have been boring to watch. Spike would not have had a conflict, a challenge, or anything to compel the viewers to root for him. Spike would have gotten the destination without the journey, so to speak.
I get where people are coming from when they say they like this fic. They like how it points out all the things Spike could have and should have done given the situation, and how it shows the episode itself had some very weak conflict.
What I'm saying is this: If this fic really wanted to fix the problems with Princess Spike, then it would re-write the episode to have a more believable conflict that would make sense given the character of Spike, opposed to removing the conflict. Simply showing how easily Spike could have handled everything doesn't make this a better way for the episode to play out.
6122366 Actually, he mentions ponies all around whose jobs are specifically to solve problems, doesn't he? Although I'm not sure if they're supposed to be friendship problems or not. Either way, the manner in which the mob leaves seems to imply that all of their problems were minor enough to be either solved by these ponies or on their own. Surely they would know if they had a problem that was actually detrimental to, say, the scheduling, or the convention itself, or some important aspect of it.
In response to the three following paragraphs: I believe that this argument has stemmed from a misunderstanding on my part. From your post it seems that you were really arguing that it wouldn't make for a good Princess Spike episode--and it wouldn't; I agree. If the point was to rewrite Princess Spike in a more interesting manner, then it didn't do it. What I saw this story to be was not that, but rather a story about what Spike should and would have done if nothing was contrived.
So, in short, I agree. it either doesn't aim to fix the problems of the episode, or it does and fails. But it does provide a more logical progression based on the episode.
Well, I like this really much. I thought about writing something like this myself after the episode, but you did a way better job than I could have.
I'm not sure whether this would have been approved as an episode, because you know, conflict and learning a lesson and all that stuff, but it's still way better than what they did.
There would have also been better ways to include some kind of lesson than the way they did it. Spike could have done a bit of the advisement with purely good intentions. Some of them could have turned out okay, while others might have gone bad (without some foreseeable, convenient chain reaction catastrophe though) and in the end he could have learned that good intentions aren't always enough and that you should sometimes consult someone with competence in the matter.
As it was we got an episode with seemingly no other purpose than bashing Spike with cringe worthy humor. Even Owls Well that Ends Well, Spike at your Service and Just for Sidekicks didn't stop this low.
I might read it when I see some comments from people whom I know are intelligent and objective readers, rather than biased little Spikefags.
Someone needs to call Hasbro solely to hire this dude.
YES! Oh my gosh yes. This. This right here describes exactly what I was thinking as I watched the episode (though with much less swearing than I used).
In the episode, the ponies that Spike had to deal with came across as incredibly self-entitled, and their problems that they wanted Twilight to deal with were petty at best. And it felt so satisfying to see Spike stand up to them and call them out on their nonsense, rather than submit to the pressure and try to appease them.
On that note, I wanted to talk about how you portrayed Spike himself, that is to say, spot on. This is how I feel his character truly is, and how it should be shown as more often in the show. He's determined not to let Twilight down, and he's loyal (even to a fault sometimes); he would do literally anything to make sure he succeeded at any task he was given by her, or by Cadence as proxy (Although going to get help might not have been his first and foremost solution, as he's shown to want to handle things on his own as a way of proving himself).
While Spike might be faced with something overwhelming and not know how best to deal with it, leading to him screwing up despite an honest effort, he shouldn't have failed solely due to something like an out-of-nowhere stroke of egotism like they depicted in the show. We might be able to chalk that up to his dragon nature taking over in the face of some recognition and getting respect for once, it still doesn't make it less dumb.
I solidly believe that what you've written is how Spike would have handled the situation, if the episode hadn't needed a conflict to revolve around.
Really wishing for a Spike episode in the future where we see some more of his good traits, rather than seeing him fail like an idiot. In fact, the "Letting others help you" might have been a better moral for the episode if Applejack hadn't gotten to it first all the way back in season 1).
Sorry that got jumbled, and for using the episode as such a parallel, but it just goes to show how well you did fixing the plot.
But with all that said, excellent job.
======
Oh and that part with the earplugs... Genius! Pure Genius.
6123441
Here, you see the jealous author in its natural habitat, prowling through the comments sections of popular stories, seeking to sow discord and prop up his own, less-successful work by bringing others down. Look at how majestic it is.
6124284 I'm sure nobody worth mentioning is so starved of ponyfiction that they'd read my crap.
The thing is, if Spike had solved the problems like this (even easier would have been for Spike to ask Cadance to put a dampening spell on the room), there would have been plenty of time to focus on the summit itself, on the delegates, and maybe a bit more World Building of Equestria.
And maybe perhaps focus on actually IMPORTANT problems that may have arisen in the summit:
Like, for instance...why wasn't Blueblood there? Is Griffonstone part of Equestria? Are there any cow or sheep delegates? Goats? Something interesting happening in any of those stalls? How were the delegates chosen? Where was Fleur?
Etc. etc. etc.
6124419 OH my Zod it's just Like The Equestria Games episode
6118585 also the actual show writers have said they aren't really interested in fleshing out his character, so all of the writters write him differently cause they don't care enough to decide how they actually want him portrayed.
6124847
Which is a shame. One of the keys to suspension of disbelief is a character that is consistent, and yet slowly changes over time.
6124924 agreed Spike is one of my favorites and the inconsistency is a weird thing to wrap around a character.
I am more than happy to replace the episode with this story in my head. The actual episode was a disappointment.
Well shit, everyone in the comments was practically salivating over this, so disliking it puts me in a rather awkward position. Most of my criticism for this story would just echo what 6119197 and 6121277 said, so many people are saying this would make a better episode than the actual episode, though I don't know many episodes that have Princess Cadance spending a stupid amount of time talking to OCs and learning about their back stories with the main characters while the important stuff happens through flashbacks.
My main concern for this story isn't the lack of conflict (that is a major problem as it drives the story, and in this case where there is no conflict the story stops dead in its tracks and slowly decays in the middle of the road) or how people think this in any way represents how Spike has ever behaved in the show (it doesn't... like, at all), it's the fact that the story completely glosses over the point of the episode. You know, how Spike was feeling under-appreciated, living in the shadow of his more important and powerful friend, and once he got a taste of power he found it hard to give up because he liked feeling as if he mattered for a change (which admittedly the episode kind of failed to address in the very end too). The episode wasn't about Spike making poor decisions (although he did, but in almost all cases it was perfectly reasonable to him), so the fact that this story focused purely on changing that aspect of it while completely ignoring the bigger underlying issue of the episode, it feel like it missed the point and still ended up being generally boring in the end.
Imagine if in the episode 'Keep calm and flutter on', after one failed attempt at reasoning with Discord they just said "fuck it" and turned him back to stone, because that was the more logical thing to do. The episode would have been boring and pointless, same thing with 'Princess Spike'.
Also I'm pretty sure the dragon sneeze trees were growing as weeds, and they weren't intentionally planted. And now to sit back and wait for the Spike fans to bomb my comment because my subjective opinion threatens them somehow
Very nice. This addresses my biggest issue with Spikeasodes. He's normally competent and snarky when he's a side char, but give him his own episode and he becomes an idiot.
This is how it should have went down, some say it wouldn't have been as entertaining, but the episode wasn't very much that anyway.
6121277 6125245 Well, if you think about it, the episode was ALREADY completely contrived, not to mention that the plot itself is pretty boring.
I mean, the big conflict is 'oh no, twilight needs to get some sleep'. It's got characters acting like absolute idiots for no reason other than that the writers decided that they wanted a comedy episode but didn't want to spend the effort that's required to actually be funny, and just decided to butt-monkey Spike because anything else (including character development) is too much effort.
While I agree that this would've been a boring and contrived episode, that's only because the concept for it is boring and contrived. It was a lazy episode, plain and simple, and I think that this story at least offers a bit of catharsis to offset the poor handling of the original.
6125333 Oh my god you're alive!
6125399 So it would seem
No mistakes, only one or two tiny technicalities:
Period at the end
mine,“ he said
Closing "
;)
And Spike "me ... lived"? No gems for you young man.
A few unnessesary spaces before closing quotes (probably import problem)
My biggest issue with this whole episode is that everypony in this episode is an idiot. Spike is the only intelligent one in this episode, but he's set up to fail by the princesses. Cadence doesn't do anything to help until the end. Celestia and Luna are nowhere to be found, and don't seem to give one iota of a damn about making sure the summit goes well. Fancy Pants is suddenly acting more like Blueblood with how selfish, uptight, demanding, and violent he is. Plus, on top of that, the plot points are so forced and idiotic. Why wasn't any of this stuff like the tree trimming and water main fixing be done before the summit? And who wants trees meant to make dragons sneeze? Fluffy Clouds has also earned a spot in my worst background ponies list with how he treated Spike as "some random dragon", and how whiny he is. I don't think anybody loves him anymore after that little stunt, and for good reason.
This episode is one big idiot plot, and Spike does his best to take care of things, but is set up to fail in the end. I will say there were some redeeming qualities like the Sir Spike painting, and the speech Spike gave, but it doesn't save an all around idiot plot. And it's so disappointing after the awesomeness of Equestria Games.