• Member Since 11th Apr, 2012
  • offline last seen 2 hours ago

Bad Horse


Beneath the microscope, you contain galaxies.

E
Source

To Holmes, she is always the mare. In his eyes she eclipses the whole of her sex, and fills him with admiration and loathing. Whether she in fact stole the Starry Night was ultimately beside the point. What mattered to Holmes was that he had been matched at his own game, by a mare; that it had not been altogether unpleasant; and that she had caused him, however briefly, to turn his keen and unflinching gaze upon himself.

On EQD July 31, 2012.

Chapters (11)
Comments ( 208 )

100 deviantart points per story to the first reader who identifies the two stories that large parts of the first two paragraphs are stolen from, and 200 points to the first reader who identifies the one-sentence theft in chapter 3 (not from Doyle).
And 200 points to the first reader who finds all 4 secret messages!
Updates will be every day starting Monday at 9 or 10pm.
If anybody can think of a catchier name and/or description for the story, please suggest it in the comments. A name change is likely, because this is a boring title. A cover picture change is also likely later on, because I haven't got anyplace in the story to put the original cover art. I'll avoid changing both at the same time.

Thanks to Ickhart, GhostOfHeraclitus, and Vimbert the Unimpressive for pre-reading and pointing out many problems!

Luna's Starry Night is by RK-d. atryl designed French Rarity and the gallery setting; BB-Kenobi put them together and re-illustrated them. Brianna Wainwright (DracosDerpyHooves on deviantart.com) did the EqD cover image, and two other drawings that you'll find within the story. Other credits are given with the pictures.

The fact that this has gone unnoticed is a travesty.

912800
Thanks! But I haven't submitted it yet. Still revising. How did you find it?

912961
Oh, derp. Wow. I'm an idiot.

Yeah, I liked it a lot. Guess I've tipped my hand now by doing such a stupid thing, but oh well.

The first paragraph is from a Scandal in Bohemia. I recognize the second paragraph, but I don't have the time to go through the stories and find it.

I don't remember where I saw van Gogh's Starry Night, but the description in the story was how I felt about it.

953207
Correct! PM me with your deviantart account, if you have one, & I'll send you

i.qkme.me/35ze3t.jpg


... Well, no. But you will get

100 DEVIANTART POINTS!

(This is evil on a budget.)

953321 Holy crap, really? I feel validated now. I actually read your first comment as 100 internet points.

I always feel considerably less intelligent after reading stories as well thought out and executed as this one is for some reason. I don't know if it's the fact that so many words that I've never used are used in them or what, but yes.

Good show old bean, jolly good show.

There was only one minuscule error. A Mr. F. When. (that gets me too).

:moustache: I would read more but I hear coffee calling.

This is relevant to my interest, keep up the good work.

[strike]Comments from a week ago. Front page today.
Not sure what's going on, but I'll refrain from pointing fingers due to the possibility of me being wrong.[/strike]

Nevermind; I just read the comments. I'm a retard. :facehoof:

I'll consider reading it when it's finished.

I'm rapidly running out of reasons to not read the source material.

BRB, googling "Arthur Conan Doyle"

I've had the exceptional pleasure of helping pre-read this lovely thing. I can't recommend it enough. Also, since I know how the rest of the story goes allow me to share a not-really-spoiler: It gets even better. Seriously. The story goes to a very interesting place that took me by surprise. Read it. You won't be sorry.

953892
The name is "Mr. F." This is a Victorian way of writing - the premise was that the viewpoint narrator is telling a true story, and making real-life characters semi-anonymous by using only their initials. Unfortunately the F came at the end of a sentence. I think that's the correct way to write it. It is jarring, though, so correctness is a poor excuse, and I changed it.

A work of art this is, I only hope that the latter pieces are as good as this one :moustache:

Wow This story is SOOOOOOO good! Cant wait to read more!

OK, I'm baffled. Why isn't this story called "A Scandal In Equestria"?

955452
Hmm. On one hand, it doesn't involve anything I'd describe as a scandal. On the other hand, that title would give readers familiar with A Scandal in Bohemia an idea where the story is going.

Plus, I could lure in readers hoping for some Twilestia... How would this do for the cover art?

img831.imageshack.us/img831/7677/twilestiabysbshouseofpa.png

UH Oh! A clash of egos the size of Holmes and Trixi might cause a sigularity to form. I suprised they do not knock heads together when the both enter a room :)

the beginning sounds like the intro of a scandal in Bohemia from the adventures of Sherlock Holmes.
:rainbowhuh:

Loving this so far.

Mystery that not only doesn't shy away from magic but brings it to the forefront, and well-written Trixie, and earth pony/unicorn tension? Instant follow.

"It is the dregs, the leavings, the last resort. It is, in a word, ours, Watson."

Just wonderful. Cannot wait to see where this goes.

I liked this the first time I read it and I still enjoyed reading it a second time! :pinkiehappy: Congratulations on the excellent story and the feature on EqD!

958122
I'm committing the oft-committed sin of making Trixie more competent than she is in canon. Let's say she's had time to improve. She's more generally useful as a character this way. But you're right - I assumed by default that Holmes had done his homework, but Doyle would have stated that explicitly.

956919
No, no. That's,
Is this the real life?
Is this just fantasy?
Caught in a landslide,
no escape from reality...

956919 Had the same feeling. I was reading it 2 weeks ago and I thought Bad Horse was rewriting the whole thing.

A marvelous distraction if I do say so myself.

the second paragraph is also familiar but i can't put my finger on it...:twilightangry2:

Awaiting MOAR :flutterrage: . Only time I've used that!

:yay: for the update! And no, I am not claiming... (someone else can get in trouble for that :trixieshiftright: )

I checked the view count when I posted the chapter update: 475 readers. I checked again one hour later, after the story had scrolled off the "Latest Updates" page: 477. Ouch. I had 700 referrals from EqD in the story's first day. About 500 of them followed the link here to fimfiction, then left without clicking on the first chapter.

Here's a question for all of you. Why did you decide to read the story? Did anything almost make you not read it?

I just thought this looked interesting, i am not sure why so many people didnt read this.

gotta give you credit, you've got me interested. Bring in the worlds greatest detective, Trixie, and an original adventure, and suddenly you have me hooked on this story, Hope to see more soon, keep goin and stay golden^^

This is one of the best fics I've read across all the fandom. You capture the Victorian writing style, as well as the personalities of Holmes and Watson, with excellent accuracy and precision, and combine it with an intriguing plot that has a high dose of realism. It is truly a delight to read.

967721 Honestly the length of your individual chapters may be what's turning people away. I usually don't read a story unless it averages at least a thousand words a chapter. The only reason I decided to actually read your story (no offence intended) was because I followed the Equestria Daily link.

971089
Do you prefer longer stories and avoid short stories? I break stories up into 1000-word chapters because I look at the view counts on each chapter to find out where people stopped reading. This is usually somewhere within the first 2000 words, so the first 2 chapters can be at most 1000 words each to learn where people stopped reading.

971515 I avoid shorter stories for many reasons that probably only make sense in my head. The foremost reason is because I find longer chapters give the author a chance to do a better job of both world building and characterization. I also prefer longer stories because I enjoy stories that take more than three minutes for me to read. I think my total words read on fimfiction at this time is over 22 million [22,904,897(I had to check...)] I read quite quickly and I prefer a fully thought out single chapter that is several thousand words long to several snippets of story that leave me unsatisfied.

I could never publish the first chapter to a story before having written the ending - I always have to go back and change things to make the pieces fit together right. The reason I release chapters one per day, instead of all at once, is so that the story will appear on the "Latest updates" page and attract new readers.

However, this isn't happening. From the rate at which first-chapter views increase, it appears I've gotten approximately zero new readers from the "Latest Updates" page. But I've lost about 160 readers who read the first 4 chapters, which were all posted at once, and haven't returned.

Is it better to release chapters on a regular basis, or put an entire story out there all at once? Would you appreciate a story more, or less, if you didn't have to wait for the updates?

ADDED:
I have another story that's been troubling me for a long time, a tricky story with touchy subject matter. It's a Fallout: Equestria one-shot, darker than this one. I don't know if I should release it, re-write it, or obliterate it like a device heretic blog post. The secret unpublished link is here. It's not violent, but it is sad, sweet, and terrible. I'd appreciate your opinions.

I haven't read a detective story in quite a while.

Honestly, I've been reading this for a while- just never bothered to log in. xD

I'm rather a fan of this story so far, and I am keeping a steady eye out for it. I'd love it if you posted the rest of the story so I could just scarf it all down, but if that's not your style, then okay. I'd think a lot of other folks would feel similar. (That they'd like to be able to read the whole thing from word go, so to speak.)

Actually I prefer a somewhat longer wait. Sort of like French cuisine. Anticipation makes it all the more enjoyable.

972456
I would suppose that it depends on the length of the chapters.

With shorter chapters it would be better to post them all at once. This allows the readers to read at their leisure.

With longer chapters spreading them out might work towards your advantage, seeing that the story has a large word count might stop them from beginning it in the first place.

EDIT: I know that when I post new chapters I pick up about ten new readers. How far they make it is a different issue...

great chapter, by the way, nice job with the hiding of the web address. Identical partials... i may have to look into that. keep goin and stay golden^^

972456 "Would you appreciate a story more, or less, if you didn't have to wait for the updates?"dl.dropbox.com/u/31471793/FiMFiction/emoticons/shrug_Twilight_Sparkle.png

I appreciate a story based on how much I enjoy it and for how long.The update schedule doesn't matter to me so long as I find the story to be worth the time I spend reading it (yours falls into that category). Now personally I would prefer to read a story in its entirety in one go. I find that it makes it a more enjoyable read when I don't have to try and remember all of the important details that may have been lost to time. An easy way for me to better explain my opinion is to use the tv show Lost. If you watched Lost every week you had to either remember all the minute (but incredibly important!!!) details, and if you forgot something you could find yourself confused as to what is going on. The other option at the opposite end of the spectrum would be to marathon the show in it's entirety over the course of several days. By leaving less time between episodes you have less difficulty remembering all the little details. The same thing happens when you read a story all at once, because there's no time delay between information.

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