Lord Destrustor's super-lame story-killing spoilerblog infodump for MViaH! · 2:54am May 30th, 2015
Yep, it's finally here. As discussed here and here, I'm putting this story to rest, and nailing the coffin with this. I don't see myself finishing it or any other story in the foreseeable future; and instead of letting you all wonder forever, I'm spoiling the whole thing here for those who want closure.
If you'd rather keep hoping I'll come back to it one day, I advise against reading beyond the spoiler wall. It's your last chance to turn back.
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So when we last left our heroes, they had just hopped down a cliff.
The events following just after would have been told in a sort of recapitulation at the start of the next chapter.
Just after setting hoof on firm ground below the cliff, Silver would have kept fleeing in the woods (probably Whitetail Woods) until he would have started to feel safer; this would have let his adrenaline (or stress, or whatever) levels to go down enough to let the drugs remaining in his system take effect again and put him back to sleep.
During his sleep, and very off-screen, the mane six would have reunited at the cliff. It would be explained at some point that after Silver’s facepunch and subsequent escape, they had all arrived at Twilight’s house for a sleepover with Princess Luna. (the payoff of those “royal sleepover”, “Twilight being too super-busy”, and “a princess visiting Ponyville soon” hints throughout the story.)
Upon finding Twilight in such a sorry state, Princess Luna heals her broken nose and decides that finding the ruffian responsible is of the utmost importance, if only to punish him. She and the mane six split in two groups to look for him. Luna herself with Fluttershy, Applejack and Rarity as search team Lambda(not actually named as such in the story, just in my notes); and Twilight, Rainbow and Pinkie as search team Tango.
Fun fact: Lock and Key did see Twilight’s injuries and spoke with her, but they left saying they’d get the guards; a promise they immediately forgot and had no intention of ever keeping.
Search Team Tango was the first to find Silver, at which point the events of chapter twelve unfolded.
Immediately after the end of the chapter, Search team Lambda arrived at the scene. It was, in fact, Luna’s voice at the very end of chapter twelve. With Luna’s authority and four more ponies on Twilight’s side of the fight, the whole altercation was quickly settled, and the situation discussed more calmly.
Upon hearing about Silver’s supposed involuntary intake of illicit substances, Applejack acts on a sudden suspicion and samples a taste of Silver’s convenient vomit puddle. (Pinkie would later excitedly gush about how amazingly disgusting it was, and other compliments about AJ’s resolve)
The farm pony’s expertise would allow her to immediately and correctly identify the mystery drug as “Bulldozepine”, a cow tranquilizer usually used in environments where bovines are cared for; it allows easy and stealthy sedation of cows and bulls for whatever purposes necessary, and it’s recognizable by its distinct combo of smelling like apples but tasting like coffee. Not recommended for equine consumption, the drug can cause severe symptoms resembling alcohol intoxication, as well as extreme drowsiness and loss of consciousness, and a possibility of liver damage, heart failure and rare cases of coma.
The important fact is that Bulldozepine is not available commercially; and that only certified farmers can obtain it without a legitimate medical license. Silver himself could not have acquired the drug in any way other than raiding the Apple farm, lending a lot of credence to his claims of having ingested the stuff in less-than-voluntary ways, and the provider being someone owning a medical license.
After trying unsuccessfully to interrogate the two goons, Search Team Omega (both teams combined) sends them to jail under the care of the police ponies, while they go back out on the search for Silver.
They soon find him and engage in conversation with Dave until Silver finally wakes back up after an actual magic purge of his system (courtesy of Luna) , at which point most of the above is explained to him. Also they finally believe him, after connecting the dots of all the behavioral and circumstantial evidence gathered. An extended civil conversation with Dave also helped make things more credible.
The chapter would have started with Silver waking up, followed by the recap. Then, with everyone finally on board with them, they decide to go investigate just what little miss villain is actually doing.
They go to her clinic, finding it empty. Luna decides to look for her at the hospital while the rest search the place. They find mostly nothing until Silver notices a door that wasn’t on the building’s plans (he handled them personally a while ago, as stated in chapter nine) , it turns out to lead to a secret basement that was never supposed to be there. Hastily dug, and kinda flimsy, but still solid and mostly clean.
This is where the plot thickens in a way I wasn’t too hot on having to explain.
In that mysterious basement are a bunch of things, the most notable of which are A) a comatose stallion on the usual kind of coma patient life support, and B) a whole bunch of magic-ish stuffs, including a kind of ritual-looking circle, a blackboard full of equations and a huge pile of books and notes.
Looking at the notes, Twilight is surprised and heavily miffed that whole passages have been lifted straight out of some of her own private work. Furthermore, according to what she reads of them, she has no idea what they are about; apart from vague rambling mentions of something called “the ever beyond” and a whole bunch of forbidden magic theories dealing with souls, she can’t make sense of them in such short time and she can’t even guess what they could be used for.
Twilight does know something about the “Ever Beyond” thing though; the name Starswirl gave to the hypothetical existence of “worlds beyond the world” that he believed would never be possible to visit, forever beyond the reach of mortal ponies.
The group, with nothing else of note to find, heads back out of the clinic in search of Luna. They instead come face-to-face with Doctor Smiles just outside.
Both Twilight and Silver, understandably angry at her, call her out on her bullshit. She tries smooth-talking her way out of it, but her web of lies is already too busted for that. At one point, suddenly, Luna’s voice echoes out, screaming “YOU!”
Everyone looks at the furious princess as she charges the doctor, magic blazing. Serene Smiles somehow deflects her attack effortlessly.
Everyone, confused, asks Luna if she’s okay and whether she knows Doctor Smiles or something.
Luna answers that her name isn’t Serene Smiles, but rather Nova Star, and that she should never be trusted.
And so the climax begins, something I absolutely dreaded, because it’s both convoluted and kinda lame. Boy was I not looking forward to putting all the following exposition into the form of a few angry conversations between nine-and-a-half people…
So at some point Luna explains that two years ago, when she was just fresh from being freed from the nightmare, Celestia hired a therapist to help her go through the immensely difficult adjustment phase of returning from a thousand years on the moon. Said therapist was Nova Star.
It went well at first, but along the road things got worrying; Nova was apparently more and more interested in the nightmare itself and about Luna’s past battles, specifically any that managed to involve the elements of harmony; than about Luna’s actual recovery.
In the later weeks, Luna noticed she had more and more trouble keeping her darkness at bay after every session with Nova, culminating in a day where she almost relapsed into Nightmare Moon. She immediately chased Nova out of the castle, blaming it on her despite no real evidence.
Fortunately for her, she was right; without the doc subtly corrupting her mind, she then truly recovered, but the creepy culprit was never caught. Luna wasn’t exactly in the right state of mind that night and didn’t think to have her arrested.
Anyway, at a later point, Serene Smiles Nova Star takes a moment to explain her side of the story;
So basically while she was treating Luna, she came to a theory about the elements of harmony, and power in general;
It all comes down to how many souls share a body, and the elements of harmony are little more than a way to temporarily bond souls together. They literally just make up to six souls share a common perfect unity. She lists the available examples;
-Both princesses VS Discord: The two of them were more powerful than his single soul, despite him being naturally more powerful than either of them.
-Twilight and friends VS Discord: their many souls linked as one easily overpowered his own, once again much more powerful soul.
She explains that each additional soul put into a single body makes that body grow exponentially more powerful in every aspect; someone with three souls, for example, has a power nine times greater than their base self because each soul boosts the others exponentially. (3X3=9) Then she lays down the ultimate proof of her theory; Nightmare Moon.
-Celestia VS NMM a thousand years ago; Despite Celestia being slightly stronger than her sister and having the elements of harmony, she could not defeat NMM and had to resort to a cheap cheat trick to even survive, banishing her to the moon as a very last resort. Group sessions with both princesses let Nova know that Celestia would have been killed that night if not for her trickery, and that she literally had no way to win otherwise.
-And then NMM VS Mane 6 just recently: The six of them effortlessly overpower the being that could have easily killed a far stronger opponent than any of them.
She says this would prove the elements themselves to be the strongest factor, were it not for the fact that Celestia was almost powerless even with them; they’re powerful and quite a boost, but not the most important factor.
While the elements are activated by friendship, it’s not friendship that actually creates the power; it’s the simple fact that the elements cause their wielders to share their souls with each other for a while, providing each of them with an amazing increase in power.
Upon formulating that hypothesis, Nova decided to try pushing subtle tests. She wanted to make sure, she needed to know. So she set out to nudge Luna towards the nightmare again. She did so because Luna was already in a perfect position to be observed, and could probably safely be neutralized with the elements again if the need arose.
And mostly because Nova, with the extensive knowledge provided by Luna, theorized that the nightmare was actually some sort of otherworldly soul parasite. A second soul that had once inhabited Luna, inherently making her powerful enough to fight off her much stronger sister.
Being chased out of the castle was not much of a problem at that point; she had a theory to prove. She went into hiding, adopted the Serene Smiles persona, and went to work furthering her research.
When asked why she did all of this, why she took such risks, she answers that it just felt more important than anything else she could do. A world-shattering revelation about the very nature of magic and power. Surely twilight could understand the value in that?
So she went on for a while, searching for other examples of the theory but ultimately deciding to do things herself.
She looked into forbidden soul magic, and eventually managed to steal a soul. Some already comatose pony in a hospital somewhere in Manehattan.
And then another in Phillydelphia.
And both times she felt herself grow incredibly more powerful. Intoxicatingly more powerful. In every aspect of herself she grew with each new soul in her head.
But she knew she couldn’t go on stealing souls from ponies; she’d get noticed eventually. But then she thought back to the nightmare, and decided to go to Ponyville.
Because if somepony could help her find souls from other worlds, it was Twilight and her genius. Besides, the nightmare had brought horrible, powerful knowledge with it if Luna had been honest in her many tales; what if other entities could have their own otherworldly knowledge to share? More power, more advancement in the limitless new field of magic she was creating.
So she faked being interested in whatever Twilight was doing and befriended her, so she could stealthily steal some of her more advanced notes while she had her clinic built as a believable cover.
So that thing Twilight said about Starswirl’s theory that the other worlds were impossible to reach? It was true. Physically, at least. Energy and intangible things like souls could still travel safely, and Nova used that to great effect.
It’s then revealed that she now has a grand total of six additional souls in her head. Two from ponies, four from… somethings else.
“They’re all screaming, Twilight. They never stop screaming at me.”
So yeah, she’s completely crazy.
Incidentally, it’s then that Dave’s presence is finally explained; the souls from other worlds are understandably very uncooperative, so she decided she wanted one in someone else’s body to interrogate in ways she couldn’t/wouldn’t use on herself. That’s where the other dude in her clinic comes in the picture; she tried to swap his soul with some whatever in another world. That other whatever happened to be Dave. She underestimated the difficulty in doing a double-soul-steal in third person however, and Dave’s soul slipped away from her and landed… somewhere. She’s been looking for it ever since (she reminded Twilight to send troubled individuals to her, because she knew Twilight had a reputation for solving problems and whoever got the soul would probably go to her for help)
Dave is actually very lucky to have landed in a pony, as basically any living thing would have been able to house him.
Upon getting confirmation that Nova is indeed directly responsible for his predicament, Dave launches into a verbal assault (that Silver agrees enough with to let him use his mouth for) of such epic vulgarity that Nova quickly decides to silence him with a literal silence spell.
Nova then demonstrates her theory by proving she is now even more powerful than even a princess, thanks to all these souls. She does that by #rekking Luna with only her telekinesis, making her break trees with her torso and slamming the helpless princess into the ground repeatedly. She then just dumps her into the woods, out of sight.
So basically she’s a supervillain now.
Anyway, she does the usual villain stuff; monologues, offers of power to whoever accepts to follow her, all that fun stuff. And then Luna shoots a huge distress signal into the sky, before limping back onto the scene.
Celestia is coming soon, and she’ll probably bring the elements of harmony.
Anyway, Luna and the six try to battle it out in the meantime, but Nova is just too strong. She pins them under her magic, like a powerful gravity spell, and then gloats that even the elements can’t stop her now because she already has more souls than the six of them, so she’d still be an order of magnitude above the elements of harmony.
And then Twilight says she’s dumb at math. Even if Nova’s theory is true, the elements are still more than enough to demolish her; simply because she seems to assume the elements put that power in the hooves of a single pony. According to Twilight, whose first-hand experience is very credible, using the elements is something all six of them do at the same time. If all six of them release that power at the same time, it basically multiplies it by six on top of whatever the soul thing gives them.
7X7=49, but 6X6X6=216
So Nova feels dumb for a moment, but then goes “Well then I’ll have to take care of that before the elements get here, then.”
So change of plans, she’s just going to take all their souls right now.
While those things are going on, Dave and Silver are basically ignored by everyone and get to stew in their forcibly silent frustration, until a point where Dave mentions he’d like very much to punch that bitch in the face.
Silver thinks about it for a second and decides that this can be arranged. After all, might as well go down fighting if they’re all going to end up in her stupid head anyway.
So they slink around her, perfectly stealthy thanks to the complete silence she inflicted on them, and manage to get behind her while she’s distracted by her gloating over Twilight and her friends.
And then they take a running start and perform an epic leaping kick aimed right at Nova’s head.
She unfortunately manages to notice them in time to turn around, but fortunately not in time to do anything about it. She takes a Dave-enhanced, running, two-legged, earth-pony jump-buck right in the face. Something something about it being surprising to see it didn’t rip her head clean off something something.
The epic kick is just barely enough to make her lose consciousness for a fraction of a second, and the people in her head seize the chance; like Dave, they could have some control over Nova’s body if she wasn’t exerting her own control so much. So with the chance they’ve been given, they do the easiest thing they can think of and make her lose control of her newly-immense reserves of magic.
It violently explodes out of her face, launching Silver very painfully at the ground, and forms a sort of uncontrollable ball of bright magic churning right in front of her face. The pain of the magic’s heat, coupled with the vengeful intent of the souls she stole, make her unable to regain control. So she just screams for a while while Silver writhes on the ground. Twilight and Luna, both exhausted of their own magic, are incapable of helping her until Celestia arrives with a bunch of royal guards.
Celestia, confused as all heck, still does what Luna tells her and braves the burning ball of magic to siphon the rest of Nova’s reserves before releasing all of it into a giant pillar of fire in the sky.
She has several questions.
That particular chapter would have ended as Silver got carried away to the nearest hospital. (the explosion slammed them into the ground very hard)
Time skip to about three fucking weeks later. Silver and Dave spent those weeks nursing the freaking fractured vertebrae they got from their little stunt (that explosion slammed them very, very hard), while Twilight spent those trying to figure out Nova’s equations and formulas so she can send every soul back to their rightful place. Nova spent them in a jail-hospital-something, babbling incoherently to the voices in her head with her burned face and her half-melted horn.
Shenanigans with a few visitors to Silver’s hospital room would have occupied most of the chapter along with a recap of the three weeks. Dave and Silver, stuck together in a hospital bed for three weeks, worked out a system of time-share of the body where they agree to take turns controlling it.
Anyway they’re discharged some time later, a few days at most, because an earth pony’s constitution boosted by a second soul makes fractured spines heal fast as shit.
Then we get to the ending when Twilight figures Nova’s shit out, and manages to send everyone where they belong, with Dave sent out last. She also brings back the guy who took Dave’s place in his body, and everyone lives happily ever after, except Nova’s goons who spend some time in jail, and Nova herself who is scarred for life and forbidden from ever using magic again.
The story ends with Dave saying goodbye to Silver and getting whisked away back to his own lame world of non-horses.
Some notes;
-The drug in Silver’s coffee would indeed have been a lethal dose if his earth pony constitution hadn’t been boosted by Dave’s presence. Some of the other feats Silver accomplished can also be explained by that; how he wall-jumped; how he finished work so surprisingly faster; how easily he would forget about the painful things happening to him; how his accidental punch in Twilight's face was hard enough to break her nose, and all that fun stuff.
-The reason Dave couldn’t actually sleep wasn’t because he was stuck in Silver’s head; it was because he hadn’t been put there properly. The ones in Nova’s head slept along with her, saving her the trouble of having to restrain her own incredible power from the angry people she had trapped in there. Since she wasn’t there to do things properly in Silver’s case, Dave wasn’t bound correctly and had a bunch of problems the proper soul-stealing ritual would have prevented.
-The guy sent in Dave’s body as an otherworldly spy made him lose about ten pounds while he was in there, because a sudden shift to a vegetarian diet and some exercise tends to do that. Once released from prison, he would go on to have an amazingly prosperous career of “inventing” things he saw in the human world and selling them. Equestrians have him to blame for the invention of reality TV, microwave ovens, twerking, and hot pockets. And also phones, probably.
So there you have it I guess. A three-year old outline of the very first idea that popped into my head when I decided to write fanfiction, with nearly all the original cliches and bullshit I was too stupid to notice immediately and then further cemented in place with foreshadowing.
My hindsighted opinion of the piece in general, now that I've made peace with the idea of never finishing it? Mehhhh, I guess. It was my very first story; the very first idea I got the impression was worth trying... And it shows. The writing has almost no effort, the plot is kind of an unbalanced mess with a paper-thin stretch of nothing leading to a climax ridiculously bloated with exposition and conversations involving too many people, and I still don't even get how it got popular.
My mistakes were many, and I was too lazy, too insecure and paradoxically too vain to bother correcting them when I began noticing them with the lenses of hindsight. I probably should have dropped the story long ago, honestly.
Oh well. I got some great experience out of it, I guess. It was a lot of fun, too.
Thank you all for giving this thing a chance. I learned a lot, and loved most of the time I spent working at it. And I owe it all (most of it, at least) to you folks.
Yeah, I've been rambling long enough. See ya.
I don't think you give yourself enough credit, this all sounded pretty awesome.
I liked it!
What a shame this epic will likely not be completed.
i.imgur.com/gytCGgu.jpg
So basically: Betrayal, self experimentation because SCIENCE, chain soul resonance, Dave leaves with literally nothing despite all the crap he went though, Equestria gets a tech boost letting them eventually build magic AI, magic AI has souls, robot Nova Star, space robot pony war with lasers and explosions.
That all sounded great to me. Sucks you won't be continuing.
So sorry to see you and the story go... I loved it so much, but if you truly don't want to finish the story, then I wish you the best of luck and for you to
live long and prosperhave a good long life.Goodbye, Lord Destrustor. I'll miss you.
So... You're cancelling?
(FAIL IMAGE)
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
Thank you, I wish more authors did this with works they are ending/canceling.
Well, I'm sad to see this go. I have to say, though, that whole shared souls thing is now my head canon. I'm going to have to revise my theories of Equestrian magic.
Well I am sad to hear it won't be finished I am very glad to hear how it ended I like having a completed story or at least closure of the characters and there adventures
I applod you more authors should take a note from you on how to cancel a story
Because this is true service to the fans
NNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!
I will miss you dearly........
The backstory stuff seems fine, but Dave and Silver successfully convincing the main six about their situation so quickly and with such little ceremony would have killed the story for me as soon as it reached that point. All the good guys being on the same page and teaming up to fight a baddie is not interesting. What you had been doing when the story left off- Dave and Silver having to struggle to convince others of their situation while having to fend off the baddie, who could use her position to make a very reasonable sounding case that Silver is just crazy and they should put him in her care- that's what was interesting, and it's exactly what you needed to keep doing, instead of bringing the struggle to a close way too soon and way too easily like you describe here.
So this story was never going to live up to its potential. That said, everything of the story that you did write and published before it's cancellation, judged on it's own, is quite good, and when you say "the writing has almost no effort" you're being WAY too hard on yourself. I've seen what that looks like, and your story has never been that. I can only hope that one day you'll come to appreciate what a respectable effort this actually was.
Hey, the story is marked as On Hiatus. Why isn't it marked as cancelled if it's cancelled?
Aww. I wanted to see silver get married to his boss.
I'll go ship somewhere else ;_;
Hey I know this was forever ago, but I just got back onto fimfiction. First off thank you for this info dump. It was a million times better then just letting it die.
Secondly, even tho it was your first and your judging it harshly, it was honestly my favorite story to follow back when I was on here. Just saying.
Thank you! This was awesome.
I just finished reading this story a second time. In one sitting of course. I agree that you're being too hard on yourself. It was an interesting premise and it was fun to see it play out.
And while I know you don't intend to finish the story; a word of advice for all that exposition in the climax. Just have the characters talk about it in a way that would come naturally to them and leave the rest in a blog post. A lot of details can be implied, summed up or left out.