Daring Do is seeking the underground City of the Talking Dogs. Maud Pie is hunting a talking dog who stole her sister's soul. Naturally, they cross paths and decide to team up.
A bewildering array of villains stand against them: Diamond Dogs, magma dinosaurs, gun-wielding apes, time travelers, an army of bat ponies and lizard ponies, a council of interdimensional evil, and a possessed crown. But those villains are about to learn the hard way that no force on Earth—or under it—can stop the dynamic duo of Maud Pie and Daring Do.
"Much like its heroines, this fic sinks to depths I never imagined were possible. 0/10"
—Quibble Pants
Update: By popular demand, we've divided this story into three chapters.
This is set in the same 'verse as our prior stories. Some parts will make more sense if you've read those other stories. Other parts will make less sense if you've read those other stories. Some parts won't make sense, no matter what you do. Because this is an exquisite corpse.
Cover art by EpicBleye, with slight touchups by Meta Four.
Ya might wanna break it into several chapters.
I laughed, I cried. Only the first one was due to this story.
On the one hand, you introduced me to the concept of the exquisite corpse.
On the other hand, that's a twenty-two-thousand-word-long chapter.
I'd advise breaking it up. Let me know when/if you do.
Break it up!
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It's been done.
On a completely unrelated note, "Be careful what you wish for."
Well... this was insanely fun....
This chapter ends in the middle of a dialogue.
Tune in next week for thrilling conclusion of whenever who was talking starts breathing again.
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You guys happy now?
It feels like I'm losing my mind.
Easily the most misguided assumption in fanfiction history.
Well, this has all been worth it. :)
The Quibble Pants section is easily the best part of this thing and the funniest thing I've read all week. :D
I just wish y'all had said which stories to read first, because that's clearly why I had difficulty with the first half or so. :B
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Hey! Sorry I didn’t notice your comments earlier. I’ve got an answer to your implied question—which is probably useless to you now, months after the fact, because I can’t imagine anyone (who didn’t help write this nonsense) remembering specific characters for that long.
The omniscient council of evil crossover characters who exist “Below Time” was established in Diamond and Silver’s Excellent Adventure. Ditto for the Time Patrol.
Garter Briefs was introduced in Parents of Ponyville, but he’s the son of two characters who were introduced earlier in Diamond and Silver’s Excellent Adventure.
Colt Skylark was introduced in Tealove’s Steamy Adventure, and his subplot ended there with him getting fired from the bad guy’s organization, then his cameo in Diamond and Silver’s Excellent Adventure involved him declining a job offer from the Time Patrol. Since he’s working for the Time Patrol here anyway, I don’t know if that’s off-screen character development or just a plot hole. (Also he was originally a pony, not a literal skylark.)
The Cultist was the ending Big Bad of Tealove’s Steamy Adventure, and it was strongly implied but never outright said that she was secretly Pinkie Pie all along. Meanwhile, Diamond and Silver’s Excellent Adventure established that the historical Puddinghead became a multiverse-threatening megalomaniac when she got her hooves on a tome of eldritch lore. Then in Parents of Ponyville, I took the little bit of remaining ambiguity and used it to retcon that the Cultist was not Pinkie, but actually a time-traveling Puddinghead. So all the nonsense in this story about Pinkie and Puddinghead “sharing a soul”, or that Pinkie’s presence in the timeline keeps Puddinghead out, was the other authors reacting to my retcon.
Baron Zeppeli debuted in Tealove’s Steamy Adventure, where that one author who kept shoving in these crossovers intended for him to be a mentor figure like his namesake from JoJo’s Bizarre Adventures, but other writers who hadn’t read any JJBA immediately derailed him into being a supervillain. Then he reappeared as a major character in Diamond and Silver’s Excellent Adventure, where apparently every author wanted to write him correctly this time—but everyone had a different idea of “correctly”, so Zeppeli changed morality and alignment in practically every scene, and at one point he was even inexplicably a pony instead of a zebra. Zeppeli ended that story firmly on the side of the heroes, which I think is why this story uses “The Baron” as some kind of otherwordly spirit, vaguely distinct from Baron Zeppeli himself.
Eventide Zeppeli debuts in this story, but his parents hooking up was established in Diamond and Silver’s Excellent Adventure. (He’s the son of Twilight Sparkle and Baron Zeppeli, by the way.)
The Cutie Mark Crusaders in a trench coat show up because it had become a running gag that at least one member of the Apple family has to be shoehorned into every one of these stories, a tradition going all the way back to our first story, Derailed.
The line “The drugs were beginning to wear off,” is another running gag going all the way back to Derailed.
Characters who originated in this story (unless they’re from a crossover I don’t recognize) include: Blossom the talking dog, all the talking ankylosaurs, David the lizard pony, Joey the bat(pony) and all the other bats, and Baron-Bot 2000X.
In short: Plot threads in the Insaneponyauthor “canon” are more like individual noodles on a plate of spaghetti. They’re all tangled together, and you can’t follow just one without brushing up against all the rest.
As I’ve hopefully demonstrated with all the above: hahaha, no.
Really, if you had read all our prior stories, then instead of feeling the confusion of “Who is this character the authors clearly expect me to recognize?” you would instead get the confusion of “Huh... why did this pony change sides and transform into a bird since the last time I read about him?”