A subject of frustration · 7:47am Jan 11th, 2015
No, not the way every other goddamn click I click on this site brings me to a phishing site, although I will admit that is FRUSTRATING AS HELL and has effectively broken the site and honestly Knighty should disable all ads until AdSense fixes this shit because sweet filly Celestia on a pogo stick this is annoying... but no, that's not what I want to talk about.
So the truth is dragons never impressed me much. I did think Smaug and Gollum were the only memorable parts of the original animated Hobbit movie (which it turns out is so bad my eight year old hates it), and I read Pern, and all that, but I used to have a button saying NUKE THE DRAGONS because back in the 80's, friggin' everything was dragons, elves and unicorns (the sequel to that button was "And while you're at it, toast all those fuzzy white unicorns too!" and a third said "Of course I like elves... in a nice sauce bearnaise"). Nowadays dragons kinda bore me. Oh, I read Temeraire, but that was mostly because Naomi Novik wrote it and I knew her from fandom, and I read Jo Walton's Tooth and Claw because the premise intrigued me, but mostly I thought dragons were silly, and MLP dragons are so damn goofy looking it's hard to take them seriously.
Discord is supposed to fight a dragon in the next chapter of Not the Hero, and all my notes said were "Discord goes and retrieves Element of Greed", because dragons didn't interest me, so I was kind of drawing a blank on how that confrontation would go. And then I saw the new Hobbit movies.
OMG Smaug. Yeah, ok, I take it all back. Dragons can in fact be fucking impressively scary.
So now I want to write a decent fight. It would always have been boring to write Discord waltzing in and just taking what he wants... first off I did that with the Kraken already and secondly it was boring the first time, but I didn't want to focus on a fight scene just then and I also wanted to show a powerful, feared creature not being stupid when it comes to Discord, to emphasize that Discord is a badass when he's not fighting Anon. That's not gonna happen this time. My dragon, Wiñaypaqori (I researched the Quechua language, tongue of the Incas, to come up with that), has the Element of Greed. He is not going to give up anything without a fight.
But here's the problem. I am sick and tired of fanfics nerfing Discord. Discord is more powerful than a dragon. Dragons are big and breathe fire. Discord manipulates reality. Even if dragons are immune to his reality warping directly, how are they going to be immune to his abilities to do things like remove gravity? How are they gonna hurt a guy who turns into a blob of mist and oozes, or turns his head into a balloon and then removes it from his body? I write a Discord who can be hurt -- I've done it several times in this story -- but he can't be hurt easily. Anon's ability to harm Discord wouldn't be as shocking if Discord could be easily harmed by stuff he could run into on his own world.
So I'm having a hard time blocking this fight out. I'm trying to draw on Smaug for "impressively scary dragon", but you know, the ability to breathe fire and eat you just is not as scary when you're Discord. I don't want an easy fight but I also don't want Discord inexplicably less powerful than he is in canon. If this was post-reform Discord I could handicap him by having a pony he needs to protect, but pre-reform, that wouldn't work.
This has been part of my holdup, BTW. I had intended to roll right into Not The Hero as soon as I was done with the last chapter of Elements of Opposition, but this fight scene with the damn dragon is hard.
Clearly, MLP dragons have magic in their firebreath. Tanking lots of direct blasts from that would probably not be healthy for discord.
Well, for one thing, the Dragon has the Element of Greed. Maybe he can use that against Discord?
I have some ideas. PM me if you want to hash some stuff out?
You should check to see if you didn't pick something up elsewhere.
1) Go to your extentions. In Chrome, this can be found under 'tools' in your options folder right under the red exit button. Delete all unwanted extentions.
2) Check your installed programs, and uninstall anything you didn't download yourself in the last several days.
3) Check the address being linked to. If it's a 'dll host', you have a lot of work ahead of you. Also if that's the case, you should know better than to go browsing uporn. :P though I doubt you did
And get adblockplus it helps a ton and it's free. Hope that helped
Ahh, the problems of writing anything other than a curb stomp battle for deity level characters. Reminds me of the difficulty I have in my own fic of keeping even pre-alicorn Twilight in plausible danger against non-magical foes without having her just conveniently forget that she can teleport.
Regardless, I'm sure I'll be pleased with whatever you end up going with.
2715010
No, it's just this site, and Knighty confirmed on Fimfiction's Twitter that it's AdSense doing it.
And silly, I'm too old to go browsing porn... without doing it from a throwaway virtual machine that can be nuked at will, on a browser with incognito turned on. :-) It's not my field, but my husband does internet security consulting among other things, so I know how to keep my virtual condoms on. :-) But thanks for the advice, because for all I know this damn thing Fimfiction clicks keep dumping me into could be poisoning my browser.
I'm reminded of a chapter on magic in Letters from a Fascinated but Frustrated Scientist from the Consequences of Unoriginality 'verse by Andoriol on Reality Warping magic and it's opposite, Reality Calcification:
Which the main character in that universe specialized in because he fought Outsiders whose mere presence broke the rules of reality... and also because he himself is an outsider who has similar effect in his world that Anon does in Not The Hero, except he is aware of it and so is everyone who is affected by it, in a I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream way, and he was trying to desperately find a way to undo it. That said, just because the magic existed didn't completely negate reality warping magic, it just made it more difficult to use and limited how far the effects propagated .
The reason I bring it up is the idea that there could be a subset of magic that resists reality manipulation. You've already implied that the stone statue Discord is sealed inside of does this not only to him, but also protected him as well from Anon's initial reality rewrites. If such magic existed in your story, and if the dragon had any access to that (being big, old, and powerful), it could negate much of Discord's advantage. Or at the very least, make him work for a victory than just reversing gravity and letting the dragon float away.
Check out your profile at https://www.google.ca/settings/ads, and see if there's stuff there that you might want to get rid of. The adds I get here are pretty localized, and relevant, so I don't mind them much.
2715029
Ooh, nice. Dunno if I'll use it here, but definitely somewhere, because I actually have a channel for that. The Avatar of Order, counterpart to Discord and the Tree of Harmony, was a mountain of crystal until Discord shattered it into a zillion pieces. A mage channeling mana through one of the shards could activate Matrisse's power, which is exactly that -- setting the rules of reality and enforcing them.
Well, I'd give you advice here, but you already saw how I did it. Suffice to say, in the absence of the ability to affect the dragon directly, I've always believed that Discord would go for the teleport spam and battering the dragon with whatever he could conjure up or take from his environment. Or maybe if this dragon is a Smaug type who wallows in his big pile of gold and hates to see any of it taken, you could have Discord animate it to create a big treasure monster that'll try to run away to freedom, forcing the dragon to chase it.
Then make your dragons different. Its fantasy, you can do whatever the hell you want.
This Wiñaypaqori is an old ass dragon right? Then make him more powerful based on that fact, dragons are inherently magical creatures, who knows what they are capable of becoming as they grow older and accrue more magic. Perhaps they become more in tune with the spiritual plane and are therefore not wholly 'there' anymore, perhaps not, perhaps they have become so radically powerful that fire burns, even one such as discord when he turns into something inflammable, not because the fire is so OP it burns what cannot be burned, but because the properties of dragon fire operate differently than what Discord was expecting.
The fight with the dragon is only as boring as you make it.
Personally, I have always loathed the god-cord interpretation of Discord, although Not The Hero is kind of an exception, largely because I interpret that Discord is a 'god' much in the same way old European interpretations of the gods as gods, (ludicrously powerful ass beings and mostly spiritual with some physical aspects but flawed as hell and could even be tricked, defeated and in some cases killed by exceptional mortals, see Celtic, Germanic, Norse, Greek and Slavic mythologies) rather than the demiurge interpretation, which is still better than making Discord some insane abrahamic knock off, but not to my taste.
But you Discord is somewhat flawed, is as arrogant as all hell and dismisses dragons out of hand. Humble him. Tolkien dragons, as powerful and as 'naturalistic' as they seemed (tooth and claw and fire) weren't what they seemed, just as wizards and magic in Middle earth weren't what they seemed (bloody angels), Wiñaypaqori doesn't have to be what he seems, and Discord strikes me as going into the fight half cocked, self assured and slightly in over his head, because an elder dragon is sure as fuck several hundred steps above a mere mortal on the cosmic scale, particularly one that is an element bearer and has accrued God only knows what else in terms of power, both his own and in his treasure trove. This is a good opportunity Discord, in his right mind and on a good day, is still capable of being challenged even without the reality breaking powers of Anon being involved at all.
"Oh I'll just send him to Jupiter." *snaps fingers, Wiñaypaqori doesn't go anywhere.*
"No sell."
"...huh" Not because he is a dragon but because he happens to be Wiñaypaqori in particular.
Of course if you insist on not making Wiñaypaqori that powerful, then just have the fight be where Wiñaypaqori's persistance, endurance, and more to the point, adaptability be on a level where Discord is genuinely made to sweat.
There are plenty of ways to prove Discord is a manifest badass while making him genuinely work for what he wants.
Well, obviously, The dragon has the Element of Greed and has an absolutely massive hoard, yes?
So, logically, would it not make sense, especially in a land like Equestria that's absolutely overflowing with magic and stuff, that he also has a lot of other magical artifacts as well? Some of them could be eldritch and destructive and powerful enough to take Discord on. Especially if there was one of them that could maybe cause some sort of area effect that might weaken or even remove Discord's power temorarily via reality calcification as 2715029 said. This would admittedly be nerfing Discord, but only in a temporary and removable (if he finds the artifact doing it) sense.
But if you get creative enough with what artifacts do, you probably won't even need that. Not to mention there is indeed also the interpretation that 2714985 said where a Dragon's fire is also their magic delivery system (believable given Spike's instant mail breath). If a Dragon can, basically, cast spells through their fire, you not only get a burning sensation, but also a great big blast of magic spell in your face.
I think if you combined these things, you'd find that he's a match for Discord.
EDIT: Just saw your comment here 2715038 (it took me a bit to write this one)
Maybe one of these shards is part of his hoard? :P
2715046
This is a good point. Discord does have a lot of experience fighting dragons, from when he was a lot younger and less powerful... but because of that, he's actually more cocky going up against a dragon, because he's like, oh please, I kicked your kind's butt when I was a kid, you think you're a match for me now? Except he's kind of forgetting he had help from Celestia and Luna then, and Luna in particular was horrifying... dragons sleep. A lot. Except when they can't sleep because every time they close their eyes their worst fears come to life, over and over. Discord didn't kill most of the dragons he defeated -- he broke their minds, but Luna had ensured they were massively sleep deprived and half broken already.
He doesn't have Luna to help him now, and Winnie has an object that, all by itself, grants the user about 14% of Discord's own power level (if one individual were to wield all seven Elements of Disharmony together, they would essentially be a second chaos avatar, and rival Discord himself... so any one Element Bearer has a seventh of Discord's power.) winnie may be able to use his element to directly block Discord on a magical level, by countering Discord's power with... Discord's power. Of course Discord's still much more powerful, but Winnie's also a very powerful dragon.
2715046
Actually those dudes do in fact fall in the realm of being demiurges; you don't have to be on the level of Ialdaboth and make the entire planet Earth out of what your mom Sophia left lying around to be a demiurge. I kinda have the same interpretation, that Discord is more similar to a Norse or Greek god than either Ialdaboth or Yahweh -- in fact you more or less say it perfectly, ludicrously powerful ass beings mostly spiritual with some physical aspects but flawed as hell. :-) My Discord was born a more or less normal mortal, was exposed to a surge of Chaos magic powerful enough to make him one of the world's most powerful mages, and then had a Dr. Manhattan moment and ascended to become the chaos avatar, which is one of three beings whose existence balances magic on their world. But he can be killed, and while he has brought himself back from the dead a few times... other chaos avatars have died and stayed dead. He knows this but doesn't think about it much. :-)
2715029
... and it utterly-horrified him, because he knew that the Ponies flinging themselves at his feet (sometimes literally, to gain access to his genitalia) weren't really in love with him, they were under the influence of his uncontrollable super-charisma. To the extent that he liked them (and there were some he did like) it bothered him even the more, because he realized that he was humiliating Ponies he respected.
He was kind of the anti-Anon.
2715054 I can see why you'd classify the Old Gods as demiurges (using Old Gods as a catch-all term because its simpler that way) but I wouldn't, I classify demiurges as being slightly step above or at least different depending on how you look at it. I mean the old gods had their portfolios but if you read the legends, its quickly apparent they are 'assigned' these powers and spheres of influence rather than being born into them inherently (well in most cases anyway) so yes, they seem to be the kind of 'pick up the creator's tools he left lying around and fuck with them' kind of demiruge Discord described himself as, but Discord is specifically something different than these kinds of gods, particularly evident with the contemptuous ease with which he seemingly pwns other gods. (Something which is best shown, not told, particularly when we learn he has a counterpart, Order, who got fridged in the same paragraph he was introduced)
I am not advocating you necessarily introduce a celestial hierarchy, because gods need not necessarily have one, or at least, not have one mortals would recognise, just saying you'd be underselling the significance of being a demiurge as opposed to being Thor.
2715062
Oh I'm aware, it's one of my favorite stories. I just pointed out that his power was like Anon's powers in the forced charismatic way rather than him being similar to Anon in personality or even skill/power.
2715052
If you need any inspiration about a godlike teleporting character fighting an elder dragon, I volunteer Wakfu's Grougaloragran (dragon) V.S Nox (time mage energy vampire) fight. I apologize for not getting an English subtitled video. Though, the dragon in question is in a humaniod form for half the fight, and when he transforms into a dragon it quickly ends.
2715104
This is really a thing I should write as its own separate story, because it comes up in more than one of my fics, which are all kind of sharing the same backstory for Discord. This was not a fight Discord won with contemptuous ease; this was a fight that very nearly killed him. In fact part of the reason I haven't written it yet is I'm working out the details of how it didn't kill him, because at the time, Matrisse was attempting to shut down Magic -- and succeeding, which is why Discord smashed it. Most fights Discord gets into, even the ones where it's a tough fight and he gets hurt, he can regenerate any damage he takes after the fight is over, so there's no long-term or permanent damage. His fight with Matrisse had him badly injured for quite some time.
You're correct that the story of his fight with Order would have had more impact had I actually written that scene. :-) It doesn't belong in this story, though, and the story it does belong to, I have like 50,000 words before I'll get to get there... so it sounds like a thing I should write as a side story of its own.
2715115
Thw wiki says it's in French. I can kinda struggle through French, I think. I'd be better with Japanese... I can read French without too much trouble but understanding it spoken is a differnt story. I'll take a look at that tomorrow... it's late here. :-)
2715052
I have an alternate solution: have the dragon Not Be An Idiot.
That is, he (she? it? have you already settled on a gender for winnie or is it still up in the air?) knows that all Discord has to do is snap his fingers and the air is taffy or some other ridiculously game-breaking thing happens.
Winnie knows she can't win a physical or magical fight. Also, Winnie knows Discord: he knows that Di has fought dragons before, and she knows who Discord is: an arrogant, lazy, easily distractible ass (also a god, but bear with me).
And so, have Winnie appeal to Discord's arrogance to bring the fight to an arena Winnie can win: wits.
The trope of a riddle battle is old and well worn, but having the dragon as a supplicant could be an interesting twist, and it does have a ton of precedent.
And hells, if some of the riddles need normal logic and thinking in order to be beaten, Discord could be hard pressed to win, and his victory would be all the sweeter.
Plus, that way neither party looks nerfed, since the contest is not about power but about what's between your ears.
2715136
The dialogue isn't that important (especially without the context of the previous episodes), there are some English subbed things floating around if you are interested, I just thought the actual fighting part may be inspiring.
2715136 I really recommend you take a weekend to watch the Wakfu series in full, sure its a show designed to promote a MMORPG but its a genuinely good story, solid animation with memorable characters.
2715128
Is this also the fight that drove him mad?
2715155
What, the fight with Matrisse or the fight with dragons in general or with Winnie?
The war with the dragons damaged his sanity but he held it together to a certain point. Then they killed him. He came back, believing Celestia and Luna to be dead as well, and he wasn't really sane after that.
The battle with Matrisse happened during the time period that he was ruling (or unruling, as he puts it) Equestria. It allowed the ponies to take back control for a few months, though of course when he recovered he took back over quite easily.
I'm only getting redirected once in a blue moon, and I have Flash disabled. (Sorry, Twilight.)
As for the story issue, there's more than one way to fight. Winnie could've cached his most valuable treasure (his precious, if you will,) somewhere and refuse to tell where... though it'd take one heck of a handwave to hide an Element of Disharmony from Discord. I see why you're having such difficulty.
On the other hand, maybe Discord wants the chance to prove to himself that he's still pretty badass when not caught in Anon's stupid field. Maybe he could use the confrontation with Winnie as a chance to unwind... or get the dragon to melt/incinerate his own hoard. Imagine the look on his face.
(Granted, that's kind of what he did in Baltimare, but after getting a significant chunk of himself sliced off and disintegrated, I couldn't blame him for needing more than one ego rebuild.)
Hope these help.
How do you pronounce Wiñaypaqori?
2715411
Win-yai-pack-or-ee where the yai is like the yi in yikes.
Maybe the Element of Greed could give Winnie the ability to prevent damage/change to his hoard and home, making it more difficult for Discord to fight on his turf?
My immediate thought is that maybe Discord has to hold back to avoid damaging the Element of Greed--it's easy to imagine that such a device would have some magics that make it impossible to remove from the holder against his will. So the dragon just wears the damn thing into battle, and now Discord can't hit him too hard because if he accidentally breaks the physical element it might take weeks or months to remanifest somewhere else and he'd still have to track it down again. So he has to browbeat a dragon enough to make it give up the equivalent of The One Ring while pulling his punches.
Once the dragon thinks he's losing he also might take a gamble and move their fight to the skies above the nearest village, hoping that Discord will waste some of his attention (and his magic) making sure the ponies below don't all die. Little details like "Discord doesn't like killing" are more likely to survive among creatures with X-hundred year lifespans than among ponies.
I was gonna offer advice, but it seems everyone else has said whatever I thought to say.
Anon's unconscious ability to affect the world around him has a huge range, and from what we've seen he can affect Discord from miles away, even if he is not aware of Discord. Maybe Anon and friends happen to be hiking up the far side of the mountain at the same time Discord goes and fights this guy?
My thought are that:
1) Discord has a history of beating ancient powerful dragons like old scaly drums.
2) Wiñaypaqori has an artifact that Whiñey has good reason to think that Discord might really want.
2a) Just because Discord thinks the anti-elements are the most pointless things since un-chocolated milk doesn't mean anyone else got that particular memo.
3) Wiñ-to-the-ñay-to-the-paqori really wants to keep his/its (gender please?) Element of Greed.
4) Whiññy-the-paqori has had a lot of time to prepare for her?(yeah I'm gonna go with her) inevitable battle with Discord.
5) The Wiñay Packer has gotten really paranoid about why Discord is taking so long to attack.
5a) The magnificent W believed the entire period of Discords internment in stone was some devious and clever ploy to cause Wiñaypaqori to drop her guard.
6) Wibbles P has amassed the largest and most baroquely Rube-Goldbergian collection of Discord-specific traps and countermeasures in the world and most adjacent worlds.
6a) In point of fact the defenses surrounding Wiñ-wiñ-bo-wiñ-banana-fana-paqori's treasure hoard out-mass her hoard by multiple orders of magnitude.
6b) In fact Wiñbuktu has amassed the smallest treasure hoard of any Element of Greed holder (well if you don't count the trap collection).
Think traps upon traps interfering with traps, so many traps going off explosively that Discord may be narratively compelled to put on sunglasses and walk away in slow-motion.
Thinking about it further Win-yai-pack-or-ee likely has gathered a significant (like more than 1%) percentage of Orders rubble to counter-act Discord's powers.
2717135
While this would be awesome, it would distract from the main thread of the story by so much that sadly I can't do it. However, now I think I need to use this shtick for a character, because watching Discord attempt to fight his way through a series of traps and weapons designed specifically for him would be fantastic.
BTW, Winnie is a dude. And does not like it when Discord calls him Winnie.