It's Time To Put On Them Shipping Goggles! A Labor Day Weekend Game · 11:14pm Aug 30th, 2014
Rainbow Dash: Pinkie, we haven't broken up. We weren't dating in the first place.
Applejack: Uh, Pinkie . . . that thing's got an orange in it.
Pinkie: But--cute drink, rrrright? It's Saturday! Loosen up!
I've been hoping to get something constructive done today, but I have a horrible headache. It's probably something to do with the heat. So while I try to get some stuff done anyhow and you wait for the next chapter of Looking Glass World, here's a little game.
You know that I promised that there are no ships in that, other than CheesePie, and I've kept my promise. For one thing, I'm a coward. I already get plenty of downrates just for the thing being EG, and while that shouldn't smart, sometimes it does. It's my only long-runner, and it can get discouraging. Anyway, every ship is worth an autohate or two, and some are worth more (just try writing Flashlight.) Every time you add another, you're inviting more and more dislike, which is one reason Next Gen things are so tricky. I don't need the grief. So, only one ship. That's plenty.
And for another, I think it's stealing focus. Between Sunset Shimmer and the delayed reveals on Cheese's past and the high school athletics thing and the cupcakes, I think that's plenty of story going on. When it comes to the romance bit, I'd rather keep focused on just Cheese and Pinkie. And besides, I promised.
But you didn't promise to do the same thing! And I think some people have been doing this anyhow. So here's a little game for those of you who've been reading Looking Glass World and who like wearing shipping goggles: Hunt The Ship!
Hey, it's high school, right? There's bound to be all sorts of things going on! And if you're a shipping buff, you can find subtext in ANYTHING. So go ahead, hunt for shipping in LGW and stun us with your theories! This one's fun for me, too, because a lot of times, an author puts in subtext and doesn't realize what's there.
A couple of suggestions (there are no rules)
1. Stick to what's in the text, if you can. In other words, look for your "evidence" there.
2. Same deal with ship personnel. I know, I know, someone out there probably badly wants to ship Tirek with Cheese's mom, but since Tirek's not mentioned at all, that won't work. (Dangit. I just realized--that would be kinda funny.) If they're mentioned, they're fair game, and you'd be surprised how many are. Prim Hemline is. Even Trenderhoof got a quick mention as the travel writer who wrote up something about last year's Cake Festival.
3. Other Pinkie and Cheese ships very much allowed. Since I know where I'm going with this, I'm just going to be amused.
Have at it!
IMPORTANT EDIT: Please keep it clean.
CHEESE'S MOM: Now you be polite to Mr. Tirek, Cheese.
CHEESE: But I don't like him. Plus, he keeps trying to eat my musical talent.
CHEESE'S MOM: Don't be silly. You have no talent. Anyway, you're going to be seeing a lot more of him in the future.
CHEESE: What? Why?
CHEESE'S MOM (turns to Tirek, says very sweetly): Honey-wubbles, I think we have an important announcement for my son.
CHEESE (thinks): Oh, no. It can't be what I think it is ...
TIREK (in a huge gruff voice): Should we really say it now, pookie-pants?
CHEESE (thinking): No, no, no, no, no ...
CHEESE'S MOM: Yes, cuddly-horns ...
CHEESE (thinking in a desperate voice): Please, no. Reality, let me cease to be first ...
TIREK: Ahem. Your mother and I are going to be getting married.
CHEESE'S MOM (smiles dreamily at TIREK): Oh my sweet red-skinned glowy-sphere ....
CHEESE (aloud): NOOOOOOO!!!!!!
TIREK: And we're all going to eat lots of ham sandwiches.
CHEESE: Nooooo ... wait, what?
TIREK and CHEESE'S MOM both turn into ham sandwiches and start eating each other.
CHEESE: Whew! This is all a horrible surreal dream!
VICE-PRINCIPAL LUNA: Yes, but it is also a prophecy. Unless you bring back the food from the drive-thru, all these things will come to pass.
CHEESE (clutching his own head): Noooooooooo!!!!!
FADE TO BLACK
Seriously, you could make arguments for both Rainbow Dash / Soarin' and Rainbow Dash / Fluttershy based on what's shown. More strongly for the earlier ship.
I'm just going to go ahead and steal your comment that you replied to me with from last chapter (I decided to go ahead and point out the four key words in an over the top manner).
All aboard the SoarinDash cruise ship!
2414937 Oh, EG Cheese--you and your first-world problems. Although, come to think of it, this really would be a big problem.
I already have the end planned, so I can't do this, but if I hadn't, I'd be tempted to have Cheese's mom run off with Generalissimo Tirek, the dictator of a Middle Equestrian country she met at an embassy party. At the same time, Cheese's dad is not Mr. Warm and Cuddly, either, and I don't want him to get any undeserved sympathy or let him off the hook. If I do the sequel, he'll probably come in at some point, and the best I can say is that the Reader will not like him, either. So the Sandwiches can just stay in their loveless marriage, as far as I'm concerned.
This was, however, very funny.
I kind of want Tirek to actually be fairly nice, mostly because he's being contrasted with Mama Cheese, and try to awkwardly play catch with Cheese, and tell him that Cheese doesn't need to call him Dad, he just want's to be Cheese's friend. Just imagine all that with Tirek the centuar.
2416171 it's an entertaining thought, but it's not going to happen, if for no other reason than that I can't stand woobifying villains. So crack shipping's one thing, but Secretly Nice Tirek? No.
Hmm. Dash could be argued as having a possible crush on Pinkie, but really, that's just her protectiveness at work. Really, the relationship at work there seems to be Flutterdash; Shy has her wrapped around her little finger. She doesn't even need to say anything to guilt-trip Dash. There may be something of a triangle with Soarin', but I think that's just Dash frustrated with someone else managing to guide her team to victory.
Fluttershy and Cheese, meanwhile, just have a very deep friendship, more akin to siblings than lovers. Especially after his heartfelt confession.
Rarity's probably pining for that one blogger who's constantly wearing argyle and takes selfies of himself everywhere. Applejack is too busy trying to ward off the eldritch horrors of what man and apple weren't meant to know to worry about a significant other.
(Yes, I like to think Looking-Glass!AJ basically thinks she's in a game of Call of Cthulhu. It amuses me, especially if Granny Smith starts going about about cultists stealing her lawn gnomes.)
And, of course, there's Flash Sentry's unrequited pining for his wifehorse, much to First Base's disgust.
2414937
And then they forgot the onions.
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Well, it was basically meant just to be funny. Though of course if it really happened it would be horrible on a deep and profound level. That's probably why I chickened out to the All Just A Dream resolution.
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Tirek is also the villain least likely to be Secretly Nice of any on the show, with the possible exception of Queen Chrysalis. And that caveat may be because I really don't like Queen Chrysalis -- you notice that I gave her a not only Kick the Dog but more like Tear Apart the Dog and Feast Slowly on His Delicious Entrails, While Leering at the Dog's Best Buddy moment, in Collateral Damage?
Looking at the show's actual villains, Nightmare Moon is just Luna driven mad and/or demonically-possessed. And while Luna herself can be obnoxious when she gets in one of her moods, she's definitely one of the Good Guys, and basically nice.
Discord is a Psychopathic Stallion-Colt (or whatever the terms would be for what he is) but he more wants to play with Ponies than destroy them. Though his means of 'play" is fairly destructive. When he learns some compassion, he's obnoxious but likeable. I've had friends like him.
Chrysalis -- well, you know how I feel about her. She's to me an embodiment of the way in which fear can turn to hatred -- the Changelings have lived in terror of the outside world for millennia and hence are all too willing to follow a leader who tells them "You can conquer the world we have feared!" I don't buy the notion that she's just trying to feed her people, because the potential for symbiosis between Changelings and Ponies seems to me to be far too obvious.
Sombra is a villain, pure and simple. But it's presented as so pure and simple that it begs the question of why he does these things. Furthermore, there's obviously a backstory between him and the Sisters, and if he had always been evil, why would they care about him at all save as a target? Thus, the story of Crimson Quartz, which I really should continue before something josses it.
Tirek -- well, since my chronology (after Alex Warlorn's) includes G1 and hence his first attempt to destroy Ponykind, he must be able to reincarnate, and do so with all his malice intact. So combining the two, he launches serious attacks against Ponies as a species at least three times -- 6000 years ago, when his actions are what name the "Time of Extermination" (which I would have called the "Time of Tirek" except that Ponies faced many more menaces than just Tirek), some time after the defeat of Discord but before the exile of Luna (so around 1250 years ago) when he returned to attack the new nation of Equestria; and at the end of Season Four (YOH 1504 in my chronology).
This is not someone who likes Ponies. Not even as fully-brushable toys.
And I think his Humanoid analogue would be sort of an undead or immortal version of Hitler or Saddam Hussein, so I like the idea of him as a foreign dictator.
2416452 Awwww, but I'm sure that Tirek has all these feelings and emotions!
Like hatred, anger, hunger... hunger's an emotion right? Though I think in Equestria, putting a villain in leather pants does the opposite of woobifying them.
2414945 Yeah, that's what's interested me. Basically, I'm trying to keep them all in character and doing what needs to happen for the plot, and if that creates subtext, I'm cool with it. It's curiously liberating.
2416475 And once again, Dash proves that "everything including the kitchen sink" thing holds true, even when the author's not trying. I was wondering if there were overtones of PinkieDash, given the unusual mutual thing going on there. Heck, I actually went ahead and gave Pinkie something Dash needs and acknowledges that she needs, along with the determination to give it, almost all of which is extra-canonical. I don't remember Dash saying to Pinkie "I NEED you," as she does to Fluttershy in Hurricane Fluttershy, and she needs a cheering section in Sonic Rainboom, not Pinkie in particular. I remember thinking at one point, "huh, this could be read as PinkieDash," a ship I don't like much because it implies so much emotional suffering for Pinkie, unless the author can make it more mutual. Which I then proceeded to do. I thought about tweaking it, then decided, "meh, I'm playing it as it lays."
I wouldn't be surprised if there's Flutterdash subtext. I've hinted at their background a bit before, though I haven't suggested that they're more than friends. Also, if there is any Mane Six pairing I like, it is indeed Flutterdash. The whole thing with Soarin is indeed evolving, and the "shippiness" will just continue or not as the plot unfolds, since I feel no need to quash any of it, except maybe for FlutterBulk. Even though he's very much background and probably will have no part in the plot, I like them having a nice, affectionate relationship, and something that goes back to Cloudsdale school days. Not to mention that there is something very sad about the big guy getting teased and bullied in school. I could easily see a humanized Bulk getting a lot of grief once the other kids realized that he wouldn't hit back. So I thought it made sense that BOTH Fluttershy and Bulk would have been bullied at Cloudsdale Prep, and Dash does not care for bullies.
Also, it is fun for someone who knew Bulk as an itty-bitty colt keeping on calling him "Snowflake."
It's funny about Fluttershy and Cheese. I always meant for them to have a close relationship. I don't think shipping them in FiM would work particularly well, since I think Fluttershy would require quite a lot of time to warm up to anypony and to feel safe with him. Given his very different entrance here and weeks of exposure and trust, she is as warm and loyal to him as she would be to any of her friends. Frankly, on the show, I think she sees the male characters she likes as pets. Bulk, I think, is an equine version of Harry the Bear.
I did once read a Fluttershy/Cheese fic, but it didn't work very well. I think that's because the whole premise was that Cheese was an extreme extrovert while Fluttershy was an extreme introvert, and I just don't see Cheese as an extrovert at all. Heck, I'm an introvert, but if you saw me in full-out "I'm giving a presentation about werewolves" mode, you would never, ever guess that. Anyway, yes, I was wondering if there was a Fluttershy/Cheese dynamic, but it seems to be coming off as friendshipping, and this is a good thing!
Heh--poor Applejack and Lovecraftian horror.
"Wifehorse"--
That part seems to be canon now, too, as the most recent Rainbow Rocks clip shows him bugging the Humane Five about whether any, um, "out-of-town friends" are likely to be making an appearance. In front of his ex-girlfriend, yet.
I'm sticking to "wifehorse," though. People who had their jimmies rustled by Flash as waifu stealer should now have some fellow feeling for him, don't you think?
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Oh, geez, a teenage Bulk Biceps. Because puberty isn't awkward enough, let's throw in some endocrine abnormalities. That way the social sharks can really tear him apart...
I can't help but wonder which animal friend Fluttershy might associate Cheese with in her mind. I want to say Gummy, but Gummy's a bit too passive for the association to work.
And I've loved the term "wifehorse" since I saw this picture. It was just too adorable not to incorporate into my headlexicon. (Like a headcanon, but with words instead of events.)
At least Sunset admitted that she was only using Flash to climb the social ladder. No hard feelings there. Heck, even after a few years ,she may not find any of the mutated monkeys in her new home dimension at all attractive.
I'm too lazy and tired to read the entire story over again, but I will admit in the last few chapters, I was thinking, "scoots, are you doing what I think you're doing with Flutters and Dashie?" but you didn't...
...or maybe you got some tricks up your sleeve?
2421609 Flutterdash? I already said there weren't any ships other than CheesePie. fc05.deviantart.net/fs70/f/2012/066/e/3/profile_picture_by_liar_applejack-d4rzybp.jpg
Actually, I left room for the potential for either SoarinDash and FlutterDash, but I think the FlutterDash is probably stronger.
Dash does have a knight and damsel thing going with Fluttershy, where she's cast herself in the role of protector. Which in a way, Soarin has for Dash.
There's just always some kind of hero-worhip or chivalric thing going on with Pegasi, isn't there? Pegasi are different. Even when they're people.