It is a little-known duty of pony princesses to explore alternate realities in search of concepts and inventions that might be beneficial for ponykind. Princess Twilight, in her first such venture, has discovered a technologically-advanced world, full of wonderful devices such as the "DVD" and the "digital watch". Enthused by her initial brief survey, she has encouraged other ponies to travel to this new world to study it and see how wonderful it can be for ponies.
Well, Princess Luna has arrived for an in-depth study, and she finds it to be a lot darker than Twilight's rosy picture suggests. A world so dark, in fact, that it might not be able to bear the possibility that Equestria and its inhabitants are real.
Chapters (9)
New McPoodle?! ZOMG! Insta-fav! Must read later...
I hope that's Discordian in the Thornhill-Wilson-Shea sense of the word. The best kind of Discordian!
So basically you turned pony society into its own strange form of not-quite-dystopia. I'm not sure how to think about this, I mean...the rest is quite pleasant and yet there's the Brave New World element to it.
Well, maybe you're just trying to push the Alien Other mentality here, which works quite well if so.
This was much more enjoyable. BAD LUNA. No starting revolutions! But hey, good on the Deus Ex Competent Secret Service agent meta-action there.
Okay, this was quite fun, and awfully Trumpian? Pff! President Strait is the more sane of the two.
I still yet again commend managing to make Equestria at once better and yet creepily weird and squicky at the same time. That was a doubly nice touch.
At any rate if this is what your neuroses produce I'm curious to see more McPoodleisms again!
...And for what it is worth, I had to look up the Canary Islands bit because it was plausible enough to have me researching a couple minutes before going 'Can't find any corroboration of this, so probable bullshit.' Glad to know that detector is still working!
Actually, followup query : Luna's conversation with Celestia shows Luna aghast at the dragons largely losing sapience - but isn't, in some way, the Pony's own Herd Control Magic something of the same? That sounds like a strange contradiction there.
Helpers? O.o
More than a little hard to swallow Luna's protests when one of the ponies who purged her of the Nightmare was a pegasus who was very un-pegasus indeed. Just saying.
So are the helpers robots O.o?
I have no idea what I just read.
O.o sums up my reaction to your story.
I can't tell if it's good or bad because I don't understand it . . . .
It's . . . well written at least? Good grammar? I dunno.
I freely admit you got me with the fraudulent backstory for Il Canario; I certainly wouldn't put it past colonial-era Europeans.
In any case, deeply disturbing setup, but it leads to some incredible later scenes. All things considered, very well done indeed. Though you've made me wish I were a pink mage even more than before. Still, thank you for this.
I have no idea what crazy urban legend or conspiracy theory this could correspond to, and we still haven't gotten back to the unhappy arsonist. Very, very intrigued though.
Hoo.
Teri is probably right on Luna's belief in Equestria being outdated.
8080617
Brainwashed humans.
Well, that sure was a wild ride.
I voted for trump, but because I know he will destroy this country, himself, and he will show to the world how fucked up 60% of the American people really are, he will make history, started with the attack on Syria, let's see how much he'll fuck before his metaphorical Bodyguards shoots him.
This is satirical.
I love it.
I like the idea that alicorns are basically Ferengi: travelling the multiverse to look for people and civilizations and then steal all their crap.
I guess this isn't the same Earth as the one from Inn of the Prancing Pony, nor from The Best of all Possible World?
But the Griffon history sounds familiar enough.
Well that was creepy...
Ooh Pink Magic... is there a member of the Pinkamina Multiversal Corps on this Earth? Also you should have put some pink coloring in there!
Always be nice to your bodyguard... they have the guns after all.
8080967 That would make for a VERY high concept role playing game campaign where you go around the multiverse and STEAL entire CONCEPTS or every copy of specific items.
"So what did you guys brought back from that trip?"
"Something called Democracy? It seemed like it starts from a good sentiment but it was a total shitshow by the end. I think they'll be glad they lost it."
"I got indoor plumbing!"
"That's a lot of pipes..."
"They were WAY more mad at us for that one."
8080859 *smirks* Trump 2016. In chalk. All over your sidewalk.
It would be nice if the other side bothered to recall once in a while that their President and the next candidate were both bad enough that we ended up with this one.
I called it a perfect storm... and used my Twitter troll powers to get exactly the outcome I need for The Plan.
Trump is one of mine. Putin? Feh, an evil little KGB agent. Clever in his way, but I know how to deal with his sort. The only real wild card is the fat little maniac in North Korea. He has to go. Soon. He's in the way.
8080478
Yeah, pretty much. I tried to read the Illuminatus trilogy, but it just got too weird for me.
8081098
Yeah, you'll find out soon enough how different.
8081137
Well, she was pink, but she hasn't risen to the level of pink yet. Self-awareness is still required.
8081534 It was indeed pretty different.
It's just fun trying to figure out your multiverse and if some of your stories are connected. Though if Luna and Celestia are talking about the (lack of) sentience of Dragons there's probably no Overlord with super dream magic around...
A shout-out to Round Table? Hell yeah.
8081531 You're missing out! It's hella trippy, yea, but worth it when it all ties together - and if you go back a second time? All that confusing stuff makes sense, and it's doubly awesome.
This actually makes a lot of sense. It's not even a bad thing, necessarily. I'm talking about the portrayal of Equestria. Ponies will hold eachother up, will reform eachother endlessly, but in exchange, they must give themselves utterly to their society. I don't disagree with it, but of course I'm basically a self conscious Fluttershy clone who would gladly bend to the will of a caring society. Not a good representative of humanity.
I enjoyed this story! But after all, since you're all awesome people that means that you must also be me, which means you're basically praising yourself here, which isn't very humble, so um... Bad McPoodle, bad. *thwaps with newspaper*
8081600
Well, not as far as they know...
8082357
Why is it always with the newspaper with you people? Is it because I'm a dog? That's racist!
8085511
DUN DUN DUUUUUNNNN!
You drew me in with a concept that could be interesting- a world where all the crazy conspiracy theories tour crazy grampa believes in are true- and you replaced it with a world where all the conspiracy theories the left believes in are true, and its less entertaining because its clearly couched in your political ideology.
I was going in looking for the jewish conspiracies and the gay frogs, and i get the Trump is Hitler variety hour.
This has been quite interesting and fun, at least for certain values of fun and considering that I'm a bad person.
The creepines of how pony society works was a nice addition. It's always interesting when they get some alien characterisation.
The stuff about the Canary Islands activated my bullshit detector as you wrote that they waited for all the locals being dead before filling the place up with colonists. Usually they weren't that nice.
Thank you for this, it has been quite the experience.
first off I’m Canadian, I don’t care how alternate universe this is this is just like a stretch. Like no other country isn’t looking at the United States and going! “ oh shit the United States has gone nuts.” I mean no mention of Canada or Lexico, or even a Y don’t know the United Kingdom! Are we supposed bi everyone just sitting on their hands and letting this shit happened
So so much face palming I can’t even .. ugh
Yeah I don’t think that’s ever happened in show, I mean there was the starlight glimmer thing but whatever.
8099895
Agreed. I'm still going to keep reading, because it's not that bad... but it's a disappointment and a big waste of potential.
OK, now you've lost me. You're allowed one massive change, sans justification, which all other divergences must ripple outward from in a way recognizable enough to not seem completely unrelated, and you haven't established how one of these two AU settings could have been caused by the divergence event that split the other off from canon.
That explains the high proportion of downvotes on a story by the author of The Best of All Possible Worlds. (Well, that and, given that this story is marked as complete, its highest point must unavoidably still be at a level of "waiting for things to really kick off" interest-wise.)
Research biologist here. Wouldn't work. You could target the more closely-related genera, but it wouldn't be able to kill that broadly with such precision. Too much genetic variation. If it was that broad, there's a high risk it would also mutate or already possess the capability to infect other mammals.
Also, if any nation was going to develop this sort of bioweapon, it'd be Russia.
Also, if the plagues were released by a terrorist group, they'd release them in places like airports and major cities that would guarantee rapid worldwide spread. Health agencies wouldn't be able to respond quickly enough; they'd be utterly overwhelmed by even one contagious disease released in this manner. It'd spread faster than the 1918 influenza pandemic and be magnitudes more deadly. Might even wipe out every genetically-vulnerable human on Earth... how fascinating a concept to explore...
Yes.... Yes, McPoodle... I WOULD DO IT!!
Why are there still significant number of folks claiming to be Muslim at all?
Judging from how colorful ponies are, Luna could easily miss whole concept of "ethnicity" and assume those differences insignificant. She probably would be surprised how similar humans look.
This is a really weird story...AS YOU ALREADY KNOW.
Anyway, I enjoyed it, even if the clashing between bits of real history and the AU stuff you got from your
~crazy~helpful uncle was a bit disturbing to me and maybe not so much to some other readers.