This story is a sequel to My Life as a Bipedal Quadruped
The number of instances involving magic in a world where supposedly no creature can control magic is becoming a little concerning for the princesses of Equestria. Their mare in the world of humans, Sunset Shimmer, is reporting more and more strange phenomenons, so they send the best suited filly for the job, the once-human Gabrielle Eleanor Desrochers, and her bodyguard, Studded Armor, to investigate.
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9727909
In like, a good way or a bad way?
Spooks! Sneaky spooks! Or rather, one sneaky spook and one decidedly less sneaky spook. Always remember kids, there's nothing so unnatural as someone acting natural.
9728057
Indeed. Now, will they be enemies or friends?
9727922
I don't like equestria girls. If it was normal humans, or humans at all for that matter, it would be fine. But not these weird freaky friday gangly humanoid abominations.
9728149
Ah. Oh well, I too have trouble separating entirely literary stories from character design I can't stand. How about EqG fanart with other, more realistic proportions, how do you feel about that?
9728153
Like?
9728155
Any of these?:
https://derpibooru.org/1404270
https://derpibooru.org/1362044
https://derpibooru.org/1145390
https://derpibooru.org/1747296
https://derpibooru.org/2036599
Some different styles. Just curious if you feel the same way about any of those.
9728163
Well, https://derpibooru.org/1362044 is the only one that actually has a normal human skin tone. In fact if it wasn't for the slightly anime style, that sunset would look just like a normal human who dyed her hair.
However, I think that there is an underlying problem here. You see, I don't just dislike equestria girls because of the weird design, but also because of the premise itself. In fact, I pretty much agree completely with LittleshyFIM here. His First Video about it does a good job of summarizing (in classic partly-joking Cinemasins format) why so many of us dislike the franchise.
[Actually, I have to sleep now. Feel free to still reply, but know that any response will come later.]
9728213
Oh, I didn't realize the skin tone was part of it as well.
I'm up late as well, so I don't think I'll be watching that video yet, though I have some very good things to say about Equestria Girls.
Anyway, I don't want to be the type to press my tastes and values onto anyone else. I might be able to formulate a response, but in the end, when I break down arguments for or against different pieces of art, most of the time I just hear people describing their taste.
I can't wait for Sunset's friends to find out that she's as old as all of them combined.
Also, wow, you sure dropped a lot of these at once.
9728289
What, stories? Yeah, I guess I did
Anyway, since Gabe is a young teenage or almost teenage girl, the EqG world might work differently from Earth, in that humans there also have really long lives
9728295
I considered that, but the Equestrian-style aging wouldn't make nearly as much sense in a world without magic. For one, the Mane 6 wouldn't be in school, would they?
I just figured it was a carry-over from the mirror, which was presumably designed by and for ponies.
9728315
Possibly, but I think that it's going to be too complicated and too boring to break down the math behind the ages of everyone involved, so I figure that when they say that there is no Equestrian magic in the EqG world, what they mean is that there is no native creature able to control it, so that the humans still benefit from some of the passive perks from being magical. Anyway, a large part of worldbuilding is about handwaving. It's a skill
9728335
Just a little?
Actually, it might seem like the X-Files, but those agents might end up reminding people more of Due South or something
9728327
I mean, you can do that, but I don't really see the point. It makes Moulder look pretty silly to argue that the Dazzlings don't look their age, though, if school principals that live for thousands of years aren't remarkable.
9728347
Unless the principal wasn't very like Celestia to begin with, and sort of morphed into her from the proximity of the portal. Or something. Perhaps time is kinda static over there. I need to think on this. I do think I'd prefer it if the humans there had pony lifespans.
9728359
Like with Equestria, it shouldn't cause any problems with the plot, but it mucks with continuity and worldbuilding to a greater degree than it did in pony-land. Now Sunset has been Queen Bee of Canterlot High for decades, and students manage to graduate High School after 40+ years of traditional schooling with the same understanding as humans after 13.
It's going to be weird.
That's...creepy.
9728435
I actually thought that the long lives of ponies explained a lot more than it mucked up when it comes to Equestria. As for schooling, well, I've met sharp, sharp witted, and well spoken people whose parents kept them out of school, and I've gone to upper secondary educations and met outright worryingly dense people. Like I said, could be a combination of many factors why the timeline looks the way it does, but all the Sunset fics I've read that tries to really work out how and why Sunset is the age she is in the timeline have just bored me when they do that. I've had much better experiences with stories that just run with it, or have the explanation be short and vague, so I'm going to try and come up with something short, vague, and plausible unless I can turn it into a really interesting plotpoint, like how the portal morphs things around it to resemble Equestria.
Like I said, perhaps time moves differently there. Perhaps its like Death's Domain in Discworld, where time is static, and instead of past and future, there's just the ever-changing now. I'm going to think on this
9728988
For the most part, it does. I won't say it doesn't make my brain itch when I try and think about how a 56-year growth cycle would actually work, but the ponies are laid-back and "alien" enough that I can mostly just shrug it off.
EQG is different for me because the direct parallels to our world make it that much harder to accept. For example, unlike Equestria, there are no Talent Hours or one-room schoolhouses (and possibly an extra-long break for summer, given their level of technology). They have High School, 7 hours a day, 180 days a year, for what I presume to be well over 10 years, which is enough time for human-humans to go to college and get a Bachelor's. I don't think they can justify all that time spent educating if the curriculum is only a third as dense as our schools. And that's kind of just the start; the more human-like their reality is, the less the Equestrian-model of aging makes sense.
I agree, though, that the excuses people come up with to justify Sunset's age can be pretty bad. The best one I can think of that took itself seriously was something to the effect that the EQG universe was temporally out-of-sync with Equestria until Sunset brought the Element of Magic there, which caused their timelines to align. Most of the good ones just wave the question off.
I think this is probably the best way to go. The only reason I'm making a thing of it is because world-building and continuity are my jam.
9728359
One of the most bizarre things is that everything seems to be sped up in the EQG world. The Legend of Everfree gave us insight that not only do the Principals have normal lifespans, there was even a hint of a Nightmare Moon equivalent... in the Everfree Forest. Where the event happened in the show.
Twenty or thirty years, or even a longer amount of time if lifespans are longer, does not equal a thousand.
So there has to be some epic narrative causality in place for it all to happen at this point in time, or there is a time differential (that there is no evidence of in the actual show).
Everything is very hand-wavy, especially when it comes to Celestia and Luna.
Mulder and Scullion.
I suppose one of them had a close encounter of the magical kind when they were kids, yeah?
9729423
9729429
Yup, this is why the idea I'm turning around in my head at the moment is that time does not so much move in another rate in the EqG world, but that it works entirely differently. Not enough that you perceive much, or any, difference, but there're a whole other set of rules behind the scenes.
I mentioned Discworld, and I'm kinda likening it to Death's domain. Perhaps the EqG world is a sort of amalgamation of different worlds, like it's between Earth and Equestria in the space between planes of existence. So perhaps there was once a potential for a world floating around between the planes of existence and it was influenced by the life and ideas and orders of Earth and Equestria, and maybe other worlds, forming the world in Equestria Girls. At first, perhaps little more than a thousand years ago, there was nothing, and then slowly there started forming a realm where billions of years ago, the world was a molten rock of lava etc.
A thousand years ago, the 30-something principal Celestia had a spat with her sister, and perhaps Luna went away somewhere. A thousand years after that, the still 30-something principal has made up with her sister, and this Sunset Shimmer girl is causing trouble in her school. It's something I'm still wrapping my head around, but it would explain why Sunset Shimmer left Equestria when it seemed like she was a young adult, stayed there long enough for Twilight to grow from CMC-age into a young adult herself and go to the Equestria Girls world and meet Sunset, apparently being the same age she is.
I mean, the EqG world not being as "formed" a thousand years ago as it is now might explain why Starswirl apparently used is as a dumpster/containment zone for dangerous magic...
... And now I'm getting ideas for what the mystery could be that Gabe and Armor are there to solve. I'm gonna give this some thought. Thanks, guys
9729441
Most likely
9729540
That's an interesting idea, and it lets you play with reality in interesting ways if you so choose. It kind of reminds me of Sharp Quills's Destinies, where EQG is a literal reflection of Equestria off the metaphysical mirror of our reality.
Yeah, it's the typical EQG continuity problems multiplied by a factor of three in your story.
If it's not too presumptuous of me, the easiest way around it would be to simply not have her experience those years. Maybe the moons weren't synced up properly because Luna was banished, and so her trip through the mirror took a few decades instead of a few minutes, until Luna returned. Or perhaps she damaged the mirror to keep Celestia from following her and got stuck, and it took ten lunar cycles to repair itself. While I enjoy a weird and cool head-canon, I prefer to come up with simpler solutions solutions, but I'm boring like that.
OooooOoooooo!
9729668
Never read that. Maybe I should. Been a while since I read anything about this whole thing. I do know some stuff I should revisit to get a good feel for how pocket dimensions work, like The Black Madonna and The Dark Taroticum.
The implausibility of school lasting for so long maybe, but the actual age of the characters, Sunset and Twilight, is more easily handwaved with the 300 year lifespan, I find.
That's plausible, but it's very rigid, so I'd have to be very sure that it fits with what I want to write in the future before I'd commit to that.
Humans with an Equestrian pony’s lifespan are weird.
9729770
I'd take it though, I don't want to grow old and if I can't stop it, having triple the time before it happens would be good too.
This reminds me of the scene where Gabe goes to give 'new eyes' to that mare in Canterlot.
Glad to see she is still as 'subtle' as always!
Great intro, nice work.
Dang, Gabe didn't get stuffed into a bag. Maybe next chapter, or whenever those agent types decide they need to talk to her?
I've held the idea that there are temporal shenanigans going on with Equestria and EG world. Meaning that the Sirens were there only for a couple decades at most rather than a thousand years, also there seems to be only a couple years in EG while in Equestria it's been maybe twice that.
9729795 I guess we wouldn’t be that much different from the elves of the Elder Scrolls series... except that it would take longer to uh, make babies or something of the like because of maturity is at a higher age.
9729968
Gabe metaphorically kicks the doors down to people who need help, going, "I'm here to solve all your problems!"
Because that's the rock'n'roll way
Glad you like it though, and thanks
9730032
She did end up in a bag, she stepped in Sunset's backpack
Yeah, reconciling the time frames are tricky, but I'm working on it. A little idly, but still
9730382
I'd still take it. As I understand it, humans are kinda elf-like compared to other creatures in our world. We don't have the longest lives or childhoods or generations, but they're pretty long. No other sapient creatures to communicate about the concept with though
WOOOO SEQUEL! Glad I get you keep reading your work.
9730980
You're very welcome
9729540
There's something interesting to consider with the Chronicles of Narnia series.
There was a time differential, but it was janky. It was random and no characters knew exactly what was going to happen when they came back to Narnia. And returning to the human world, even when they had grown into adults (and if my fuzzy memory is correct, had children), they reverted to their child ages with no time passed, as well as their personalities de-aged, even though the memories stayed.
Of course, this was a massive plot convenience, and it allowed each book to be in vastly different time periods while keeping the "normal" side of the world relatable, but still. More fuel for your thoughts.
9731901
Yeah, though you don't want to be too obvious when it comes to plot convenience, but some sort of temporal shenanigans might be in order for the setting
9732191
Precisely. Most importantly, with these kinds of things, is to draw as little attention to it as possible.
For example, the Narnia series, with perhaps the most glaring plot convenience out of any system, always had something more important and more interesting to deal with whenever it was mentioned, so the reader never really looks into it.
9733512
Never read those, but that does sound like it could be a good approach.
One good thing could be to write a bunch of Sunset fics that brings it up and see what feels right. Just see a bunch of different takes on it and see if a solution will arise. One pretty easy approach could be to just de-age Sunset when she left Equestria. Hand wave it as her being capable and mature for her age and it gives one a bit more leeway
Okay, before I start on the actual story: the correct plural is "phenomena" (source: spellcheck)
9730571
And now that I've read it with nothing standing out to comment on, I'll expand on this comment instead: humans are born abnormally early in our development cycle, relative to other animals; for example, the reason puppies can walk before you're finished cleaning off the amniotic fluid is because they stuck around in the womb until they were old enough to walk. Our overdeveloped brains make doing so unreasonable, given that what has to go through what is already alarming, and as such I elect to chop off the two months of difference in gestation period between humans and equines using this as my justification.
Not even there for an hour and Armor the Ladykiller is already hard at work. Well done.
Incidentally, how old do Gabe and Armor appear to be in this? I know Gabe looks noticeably younger than Sunset and Armor, but are we talking like highschool freshman young, or preteen young? She has a tendency to be very physically clingy with him, so if it's the latter, Armor is going to be getting some very uncomfortable looks from people around town.
There's been a number of fanfics that address this with different levels of success. One, whose name I can't remember right now seemed to use the idea that before Sunsets magic book was brought over the two worlds timelines where detached. Only during that three day period every thirty months would time progress in both worlds at the same rate. The rest of the time 'time' was more or less frozen for the eqg world (from eq point of view only, eqg residents would perceive time as normal) that way Starswirl could throw the sirens in to the portal a thousand years ago but to their point of view only 75 days passed for every century of time back in Equestria.
That slow time rate continued until the first time Sunset came through the portal and her 'discord' book kept a thread of pony magic active back to Equestria.
That still leaves the question of how does twilight and Sunset's ages line up so nicely...
Perhaps that just an artifact of the portal, changing species is already a huge change, adjusting ages to 'fit in' based on your first use of the portal should be also in it's power.
The first time Twilight came through school was in session so she was down aged from adult librarian pony to teenager. Maybe the first time Sunset used the portal only elementary students were near by and she was de-aged down to an preteen.
So she spent 5, 7.5 or 10 years regrowing back to late high school age by the time she returned to Equestria for the crown.
She might have even returned to Equestria for one of those three day openings and learned about Twilight replacing her and had time to research the elements of Harmony before returning to eqg world to finish growing to up.
All speculation....
9735267
About the same age as the CMC, perhaps a little older. The CMC are old enough to attend the same school as the humane 6(7) though. I guess that means that either the CMC are high schoolers, or they were accepted at an early age, or I guess the most likely explanation is that the school includes pre-high school classes.
Interestingly, if Gabe looked even younger, she could cling to him much more freely, and people would be more likely to dismiss that as a young girl who very much likes her older brother. As it is now, they should probably either cut down on the physical affection, or learn to do it in a very chaste-looking way. Piggybacks could be one thing that might make people think of them as siblings.
9735985
You know, that combined with the idea that the EqG world is still forming would make a lot of sense, at least as far as Sunset's age is concerned. Except for all her ball victories before the first movie
9736539
Ouch, that's rough. For some reason I was thinking she was a bit younger than the CMC (physically, anyway). If she were a year or two older or a year or two younger she could get away with it. But assuming Armor looks to be about the same age as Sunset she's right at that age where it's awkward. But I suppose that since family resemblance isn't really a thing in the EQG world they could pull off being siblings in public as long as Gabe is careful.
Edit: It's also interesting that Armor's arcanomorphic aura kept his wings, even in his human form. Makes me wonder if the EQG version of Fluttershy and RD have theirs as well.
9736721
It's a good thing that Gabe is as mature and verbally steady as she is then. If someone comes up and accuses Armor of being a perv, Gabe will be able to put them in their place. Normally, she'd not be very confrontational, but I think she'd go all defensive if her ride & teddy bear were to be accused of anything.
And yeah, his magical aura translated into having the potential for wings. Unconfirmed yet if anyone else has, but it would make sense for Rainbow and Fluttershy to have them as well, perhaps even Sunset
9737676
Well, she can verbally berate them all she wants, the fact that she looks like she's 13 is a big hurdle to overcome. Especially since she doesn't have a divine get out of jail free card or the ability to just say "Twilight Sparkle happened" and have everyone sort of accept it as a normal Saturday. Not to mention that the EQG universe has mass media and the internet, neither of which can be berated into submission. It's probably safer to just restrain herself while she's in public.
But as for the wings, I was thinking about it last night and I thought of something. This story has the possibility of ending with her getting her real legs back.
So here's how my thought goes: When Gabe ended up in Equestria, her aura became completely, 100% matched to an equestrian pony. She still had her "fingers", but that was on a part of her aura that all ponies can manipulate freely into any shape they want with time and practice. But for some reason, Armor's aura keep the wings--and only the wings--from his pony form when he goes through the portal to the EQG world.
So the important question becomes: Do Fluttershy and RD also have wings in their arcanomorphic aura?
Because if they do, then when they activate their magic, they gain real, physical wings to match their aura. Somehow, whether through a spell or wild magic effect, they're able to actively grow new limbs every time they transform. And if that effect can be observed to happen, then it can be recreated in a controlled environment. Once she figures out what causes it and how to make an enchantment powered by the magic of friendship, boom, new legs.
Side question about Armor's wings, how did she know his aura would still have the wings when she'd never been through the mirror before and never checked his aura herself after getting there?
9738028
Oh sure she's smart enough to not make out with Armor in public, and I'm not sure I'd want it to be because of people think Armor and Gabe is forming the three legged beast, but it might be pretty interesting if Gabe and Armor get into trouble, or are about to get into trouble. Gabe isn't the most versatile spell slinger, at least not when she can't spend a few days or weeks coming up with an enchantment, but she does have her unicorn magic. Could be fun for them to try and get out of trouble with the law by applying unicorn magic in a subtle way.
I don't plan on her getting her biological legs back. Besides being cooler the way she is and there being a lot of advantages to being a magical cyborg, I find it more... I can't think of the exact word at the moment, but perhaps more 'enlightened' for her to be considered complete with prosthetics.
Either she figured it out from studying the mirror and the transformative properties, or she didn't know and it's luck that it worked out.
9738619
Oh, I definitely agree that's she's a more compelling character as she is, it just sort of popped into my head that it's a possibility, and I know she's smart enough to notice it.
9738658
She would be, but I'm thinking that once phantom pain is guaranteed to not become an issue, she's more likely to make herself more of a cyborg than she already is. I think prosthetic organs would be the next big step, and without looking at them or having them detachable, I think they wouldn't have the same effect of unease that prosthetic limbs might have, and Gabe might even want to get some. Now that she has a bunch to live for she might want to make even more sure that she's gonna be around to enjoy it, and removing the weaknesses of organs could be a logical approach to that. Sometime at least
9741343
Sounds like she is going to make herself immortal with her magitek
9744753
That does sound like the ultimate goal of her research. Right now I'm reminded of that line from Back To The Future 2 when Doc reveals the rejuvination effect. "... I also replaced my spleen and colon. What do you think?"