Why am I so anal? · 5:19am May 10th, 2015
The real reason Discord knows about the minor "villains" well enough to recruit them into his Elements of Disharmony is he went to Anon's world, which is how he knows that in Anon's world the ponies are a cartoon... because he watched it.
I needed him to have seen Seasons 1 and 2, Crystal Empire, Too Many Pinkie Pies, and that is it.
I went and found which DVDs he got!
See, he can't have been watching it in real time because he wasn't there that long. He can't have downloaded the whole thing off the Internet because Anon has seen more episodes than Discord has -- Anon saw Magic Duel, at the very least (and probably saw Keep Calm and Flutter On and decided it was total bullshit and Discord is still evil), but if Discord had had access to torrents he'd have downloaded everything that came out. The easiest way for him to get most but not all of the existing episodes would be to buy (or steal) DVDs.
I can't believe I found the right combo of DVDs that, based on release date, he could have had access to that would have only given him the episodes I want him to have seen, but I did. Royal Pony Wedding came out Aug 2012. Season 1 and Crystal Empire were both Dec 2012. Friendship Is Magic: Pinkie Pie Party, which contains Too Many Pinkie Pies, was Jan 2013. And Season 2 came out in May 2013. (It is his bad luck that wherever he got the DVDs from -- I'm inclined to think he stole them -- did not have Friendship Is Magic: Princess Twilight Sparkle, which came out Apr 30 2013, in stock, because that would have had both Magic Duel and Magical Mystery Cure, so he'd know that Trixie would have originally gone for the Alicorn Amulet and that Twilight was scheduled to become an alicorn.)
This tells me that in Anon's world, it's 2013, during the season hiatus, so he's seen KCaFO and MMC, and probably has decided that reformed Discord and alicorn Twilight are abominations and should not happen and his nerdrage may have contributed in some way to him getting the power he has that allowed him to come to Equestria and warp it. In Equestria, however, it's the time period of the hiatus between seasons 2 and 3; none of Season 3 has happened yet. So plainly Anon shifted himself backward, probably to prevent most of Season 3 from ever happening. (Sombra's probably going to be a lot more vicious, and basically impossible for the girls to defeat so Anon will have to step in, but Discord won't be involved in that fight so we'll see very little of it. Spike won't get to be a hero. This will be relevant because Discord knows he should have been.)
I can't believe that I'm trying to track down, by release date, which DVDs of his own world a fictional character who travels to our real world would have been able to access in order for me to limit his knowledge of his own future-that-won't-happen-now. I am ridiculous sometimes. But the conversation with Blueblood is giving me fits, so I'm trying to move forward with the story in some way even if I'm having a hard time writing right now.
Well, the obsessive-compulsive part of it is more that since Anon could have come from a parallel world that differed from our own only in the division of the DVD contents ... it wasn't really necessary.
But then, have you seen what I do? I write freaking dissertations on their history and culture and language!
Are you implying the Anon was actually human at some point? Because the story seems to be pointing to the idea that he was the manifest avatar of HIE Gary Stu wish fulfillment. If he was human, then why does he call himself anon if he probably had an actual name. it also raises the questions of what granted those powers in the first place.
3058494
Maybe his parents actually WERE that cruel :P
dedication? or Insanity?
You sure? Because I can totally believe that.
In fact, I do totally believe it. Your anal-retentiveness is now canon.
3058578 Gotta admit sounds plausible to me too.
Headcanon accepted.
Honestly, I admire this level of anal retention. It shows the kind of dedication and love of the craft that come from caring enough about the story to really think about it. Thank you for being a ridiculous human being.
I was always under the impression that Anon hadn't seen that far ahead in MLP canon, if at all, because that implies that he is in fact culpable for all the changes he made. The "tragedy" of Anon is that he thinks he is trying to do good, and it's hard to imagine him thinking that when he knows that Discord could have been good but is refuting it, same as knowing Twilight has a destiny to lead and is refuting that for his own ends as well. That if the Great Lie was broken he might, on his own, renounce his power of reality manipulation, which is really called into question if he is actively aiming for certain changes.
I was very cautious opening this blogpost.
So on the one hand there's nothing wrong with going the extra mile to get the details you want right, but on the other hoof you have to be cautious that your desire to make things logically line up isn't messing with the story you want to tell. It's not like there can't be alternate explanations for these things, (for example, maybe Discord finds the "villains" by reading all the friendship reports, or Celestia's spy reports,) but the more RL connections you include the more you're going to tie yourself up. Anon being someone who's actually watched the show (and is a jerk enough to call himself Anon and be aware of how he's messing with the world) is, well, not only is it kinda really against what's been implied by the story so far but it's also edging in on massive spoiler territory. There's a whole logical chain you've made that connects those DVDs to specifics of Anon's character that haven't been put in the story yet, and IMO you shouldn't commit yourself to having those characterizations until you've written them down and published it.
3058754 It's possible that he believes he is doing good on those fronts. For example, he might think that in Keep Calm And Flutter On, Discord was faking because he is Always Chaotic Evil, and thus by stoping him from being "reformed", Anon is minimizing the damage he might do. Likewise, he may have decided something like how it'd be "too cruel" to make Twilight an Alicorn through the whole Cutie Mark Swap, or maybe he's decided that making her immortal when her friends are not is wrong(even when that's just fanon, like with some people and the massive number of lesbians).
Sorry if that was a bit too long of an answer!
3058494
Because so many people name their self-inserts Anon.
3058826
Well the massive amount of lesbians thing certainly isn't just fanon anymore by Anon's interference.
While it may be believable that Anon simply doesn't trust Discord's character, the fact is that Discord is always shown to just be a nuisance from that point onwards (compared to his initial introduction where he was shown to be ready and willing to mind break ponies for his own amusement) isn't something that I believe Anon could just ignore. It says a lot about Anon's character (in a bad way) if he would be so willing to refute canon in favor of his personal headcanon. There's a difference between just exaggerating certain things based on limited viewing (Blueblood, Gilda, Trixie, Flim and Flam's characters) and actively choosing interpretations based on conflicting information.
Similarly, changing the fate of characters (Twilight Sparkle in particular) really borders on manipulative, and the whole point of Anon as far as I understood before now is that he has no conscious idea of what he is doing, which is part of the Great Lie. Active manipulation puts him in another category completely from how Discord initially pegged him (as having no idea what he is doing beyond playing a role) and may actually make him unbeatable.
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3058494
Ha, I've been living with the stuff in my head for so long, I've forgotten what I've actually put down on paper (or pixels, rather.)
I've known who and what Anon is for some time. Since the third chapter or so, I believe. So no, I'm not haring off in a weird direction out of some impulsive change of plans. It was actually established at one point that Discord knows that Anon's information about Equestria comes from having watched a television show in his own world that Discord is desperately trying to believe is based on, and not the basis of, the lives of the Mane 6. It's also been well established that Discord is a world walker but the only place he can go since Anon's arrival is Anon's homeworld. What are the odds Discord wouldn't have watched this show, given the stakes?
Anon's character is weird, in part because he's based on characters who are almost by definition hypocrites. He's a mix of actual self-inserts I've encountered from writers that, at the least, were not particularly self-aware, and an actual human being of my acquaintance, and the random opinions of a number of loud-mouthed bronies.
The most annoying loudmouth opinions I've encountered, in general, are:
- "DISLESTIA IS NOT CANON U R STUPID" (it's not the belief that Dislestia isn't canon, it's the compulsive need to butt in on stories, art and posts about Dislestia and argue this point, generally in favor of arguing that Fluttercord and Somblestia are and therefore Discord and Celestia could never have been lovers because obviously both of them are allowed to have only one love in their lifetimes, and with a complete lack of awareness of the irony of arguing that of all the MLP ships they could be perpetually butting in on to insist "IT'S NOT CANON", they picked a heterosexual one in a fandom where most of the ships are lesbian. MLP is not Legend of Korra; there will never be canon Lyra/Bon Bon or Vinyl/Octavia, let alone Mane6 shipping, because no matter what Meghan or anyone else wants to do, MLP exists to sell toys to little girls for the sake of the profits of a giant soulless corporation, and they will never be allowed to do something as controversial as an established lesbian ship. Which is the majority of fan shipping in this fandom. But it's Dislestia that we need to point out the non-canonicity and impossibility of, at great length.)
- "Discord is really evil because how can the Spirit of Chaos possibly want friends?" Right, Chaos is totally antithetical to friendship, that's why everyone hates and ostracizes Pinkie Pie. "Keep Calm and Flutter On ruined the character of Discord!" If you call expanding a characterization and making it more three dimensional "ruining", sure, I could see that. "Discord is the embodiment of all evil in the world of Equestria and reforming him is like reforming Satan!" Um, Satan is the embodiment of evil, therefore kind of by definition he can't try to become good without contradicting his reason for existence, but Discord is the embodiment of chaos and disharmony, not evil. "But Disharmony is the opposite of the principle that the Equestrians worship, so Discord must be evil!" Harmony is a good thing, but too much harmony is dangerous; the United States government is actually built on that principle. We call it "checks and balances", systems in place that pit forces in opposition to prevent too much power from being freely given to any one entity. "Discord is the most evil villain ever because he screws with your head and makes you the opposite of who you are and laughs about it!" And Nightmare Moon would have destroyed the world, Chrysalis would have turned ponies into mindless food sources and Sombra wanted to enslave and abuse everyone and used fear as a weapon, so what's your point?
-"ARGH TWILIGHT THE ALICORN ARGH ARGH ARGH" -- I have to confess this opinion was never expressed logically enough that I understood where it was even coming from. It mostly appeared to be a personal preference that caused enormous nerdrage and butthurt for no good reason I could see.
Now, the real life person that Anon is partially based on: at one point I was in a game with him where he was playing Batman and I was playing a version of Q who had lost his powers. "Batman" pre-emptively captured and arrested "Q" (who had committed no crimes) and framed him for child molestation (since he had committed no crimes, so he couldn't otherwise be sent to prison) with the gleeful understanding that this particular accusation would lead him to be abused in prison, because the player thought that Q was a bad guy (this was long after all of TNG had been on the air, so the ambiguity of Q's character had been made more than clear). Pointing out to him that this is not in character for Batman because Q had actually committed no crimes whatsoever didn't help; somehow "Batman" was existentially aware of the true evilness of Q because he's Batman, that's why. And this wasn't the only time he did something like this in a role playing game. This guy was not an evil, mustachio-twirling dude; he was actually capable of real-life heroism, jumping in to save people in danger when no other bystander would do so. But his belief in the correctness of his opinions of "villainous" characters was so powerful, he ignored any and all evidence that a character wasn't as evil as he thought they were and all evidence that his character couldn't possibly know about them being "evil" anyway and all pretense at fairness when running games, in favor of a rigid black and white view where if you are a villain, all good characters magically know you are a villain, and you're always a villain, and you can't reform and become a hero, and you never had a shred of goodness in you to begin with. (Unless he happened to have first encountered the character when they were a hero -- for instance, Magneto was allowed to be reformed because his first exposure to Magneto was the New Mutants comic, where Magneto had already reformed some time previously and hadn't gone back to villainy yet.)
So whether or not Anon is a real human being or an avatar (and keep in mind, Discord is a real draconequus who was born to a draconequus mom, and had older brothers and other family, and yet is also the avatar of a principle), he's been established already to be a brony whose strong opinions about the way things "really are" in Equestria have altered reality to match his beliefs. Believing that Discord is genuinely and totally evil means that essentially he rejects KCaFO from his headcanon because he doesn't believe it could have gone that way; likewise, interfering with Twilight's destiny isn't interference if that isn't really her destiny and the people who wrote the show are just wrong. And because he's kind of dumb and not self-aware much, Anon is very much driven by his subconscious impulses and desires, which are the things shaping the rewrites of reality that he doesn't know he's performing. He's not a Machiavellian creature who wants to reshape Equestria to his liking for the evuls; he thinks Equestria "is" the way he thinks it is, and he will either ignore or subconsciously erase any and all evidence to the contrary.
Basically, you can think of it as Anon is the combination of two entities that, if they existed separately, would not be villains. Anon the person is a kind of dumb and stubborn guy who wants to be a big hero. Anon the "writer" wants Equestria to match his vision, but to him, Equestria is fiction, so he's no more evil for trying to shape it into what he thinks it is than any fanfic writer, ever. Combine the two, though, and you get a guy who treats an existing reality that he's living in as a fiction he can shape to make himself the star.
3059001
In your opinion, what are some of the hallmarks of non self-aware authors?
The only one I can think of right now is the number of authors on this site who fail to consider that all the female characters in this show might not be interested in the 17 year old alien high school student, though I think that might be more of a sign of Gary Stu-ism.
I must say, I approve. One thing that I find helps stories a lot is when they have a consistent depth behind them-each part forming its own little world or event series.
I approve also. Going the extra mile is generally a good thing.
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That's the obvious one. Then there's the "edgy" version in which the author portrays the ponies as hating and fearing humans, even though these ponies are famously tolerant and have been known to deal with dragons. Humans are not scarier than dragons, not more pointlessly violent than dragons, and not more dangerous than dragons. Then there's stuff where the author's OC is stated to be X, while being shown to not be X. (Sometimes this is placed on a canon character as well.) Then there's "author's OC tortured villain to death, villain came back from the dead by stealing the OC's life force, absolutely no one considers the fact that if the OC hadn't tortured the villain to death after the villain hadn't killed anyone, the OC wouldn't be dying now". Then there's "rewriting a famous story with pony characters taking the roles, and paying no attention to whether this leaves them remotely in character or not" (I see a lot of this with Discord.) Then there's overkill (for example, character the author doesn't like calls character the author does like ugly. Character the author likes kills character the author doesn't like, and is driven out of town for this, and somehow is portrayed as the victim here.)
It's lack of awareness of how your characters interact together and how each one individually thinks and feels. It's creating a cardboard world where there is at best one real character, and all the others are puppets put there to react to him or her, or sometimes there are no real characters and everyone's a puppet. Good writing keeps in mind the individual personalities of the characters, at all times, and doesn't have them contradict themselves. For instance, someone whose idea of Rainbow Dash is "abrasive jerk" may have her behave outrageously badly to a new character, and then behave badly to her own friends for defending the new character, even though the entire reason Dash is knee-jerk suspicious of new people is that she's protecting her friends from potential threats.
This reminds me of this: http://yudkowsky.tumblr.com/writing/level1intelligent . In a story, just about everyone should want to throw your plot out the window, at least to varying degrees for them to have a spark of life. Anon seems pretty happy with the plot, but that is because he already threw a plot out the window, in Not The Hero the mane 6 don't want to throw a lot of the plot out the window, but that is specifically because Anon removed a fair bit of their spark of life (hence him being the villain...). It clearly shows that you have grasped and internalized this to be able to use it as a plot point for a story, and it shows in your other stories (though less explicitly than using it as a plot point obviously)
If Discord has not yet seen Keep Calm, but it does exist in Anon's world, then I really want him to learn of and see it at some later point. He needs to see the future that Anon robbed him of, the proof of his own better potential that Anon has denied. I get that it's necessary to his character development that he doesn't know right away that he can be this good, but I feel that at some point, he deserves to know what he could've been, especially if the story will end badly for him.
"Anal"? What do you mean by that?
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Short for anal retentive.
I'm glad you explained all that, because that was NOT the impression I got from the story. I assumed that Anon had written his story during the season 2-3 break, since he only kept the events up to that point in canon and inserted himself immediately after it. And none of the events in the story so far contradict this. I hope you put something in-character in the story to explain that at some point.
3059001 Thanks for peeling back the curtain on Anon's motivations a bit. You make him sound infinitely more dangerous than Discord, or really any other villain. All of those villains know they are villains. They have selfish motives, but they don't think they have some kind of moral purpose to transform Equestria into their ideal vision (at least, those other villains don't think like that these days). Anon is an idealist with power, and no greater danger exists.
This real-life friend of yours sounds like kind of a jerk. Is he a brony? If so, you should see what he thinks of this story. Don't tell him he's the inspiration, just show him the story.
3059001
Nods. That's about how I had Anon pegged. Though, I wasn't aware he had seen and rejected Reformed Discord and Alicorn Twilight. Though his reaction is unsurprising given as I have a friend who stopped watching after season three because 'Alicorn Twilight and Equestria Girls have ruined everything!'. He also hates 'Frozen' for playing the true love subversion instead of going for the big damn kiss.
Anyway, it's among those reasons I never really have headcanon, simply speculating about non-canon details when and where my stories (or the ones I'm reading) need it. And it always irks me to no end when people utterly disregard what happened in favor of their headcanon. It's like the people who write the 'victim changeling' fics watched a completely different episode. That isn't to say an alternate interpretation (or alternate universe) can'y be used, but it needs to reasonably explain the events that took place in canon (or in AU state they never happened that way).
The point being this is an interesting story, and I wholeheartedly agree with the themes of it. Rambling comment over.
... WELL FUCK YOU, TOO, YOU WHINY BABY BEEOTCH!! *pulls out shotgun* Get face full of lead, Anonymous Jackass!
*fires... only for the "Element of Protection" to literally set up a wall of energy in defense*
... PROTECTION ISN'T HOW FRIENDSHIP WORKS! You can't 'protect' everyone from every single aspect of life you don't agree with. That's not friendship. That's guard-duty, and furthermore selfish bull-shittery if you claim to protect the 'purity' of the universe while bedding the Mane Cast! That's not how we roll, Anon! How we roll is with Chaos and Order, back in forth in struggling tandem!
And furthermore... Meet Tirek, he eats your Element and CRUSHES YOU!! Or better yet... Heheheheh. You have to 'give it up', and you don't know it's coming.
... So, yes, Alararogers, you have had me heavily invested from the start. :D
... A shame I'm working on a 'fad-work'.
I don't see anything wrong here. Do carry on!
But yeah, I get ya.
I've been writing a story for 3.5 years, and one aspect of it is two characters exploring a location. Add to that that I somehow got into the habit of barely using any significant time-skips besides in-between chapters or character-perspective shifts, and the result is the following thought process:
So, Rainbow Dash has just entered this room on the first floor of a half-destroyed building. The room is in bad shape, there's debris everywhere.
Her goal is to walk to the other side of the room to the balcony door so she can jump on a large tree outside.
That is her goal, but I need her to stop at the window instead. How do I motivate her to stop there?
She needs to find something interesting lying on the floor that makes her linger. Okay, but I already had her pick something from the floor when she entered the room, so, now, how do I indicate that she walks from one end of the room to the about 3/4 of the way where she was planning to go?
And how do I write it in such a way the reader is entertained while this is going on?
That passage seriously had me stumped for months. (Well, among other things of course, but you get the idea.)
It also is a "Fourth Wall" meta-story, which complicates things further.