An interesting dream · 4:38pm Dec 22nd, 2020
I spent most of last night's dream plotting an MLP fic and then figuring out how to file all the serial numbers off and make it original fic. Since I was asleep, it didn't end up being quite as "original" as I might have made it when awake, but it still gave me a lot of ideas.
The start of the story involved the ending -- there was going to be a scene where Discord was unconscious, having been defeated by some enemy, and Fluttershy tapped into the deep magic of life, somehow, and started controlling the wind on a major-league scale -- like, summon a tornado with a few flaps of her own wings, not even by flying in circles like pegasi normally do, but like she's casting like a unicorn except with wings instead of a horn -- and she used the tornado to pull him away from the enemy who was going to kill him, and then kicked the crap out of the enemy.
Pretty cool in its own right, but then, in my dream, I decided I wanted to redo the whole story from the ground up as "original" fiction. So first, I humanized everyone, and then I radically changed Discord's origin story.
I went back and forth for a bit about genderswapping Discord, which I wanted to do, because on the one hand, a woman rescuing a man (like the image of Fluttershy and Discord that started the story) really punches my buttons, but on the other hand, f/f is also pretty awesome. (At no point did I consider genderswapping Fluttershy. I personally think that every genderswapped Fluttershy I've seen so far is cringe-ily wrong, and if it was done right, you'd end up with a pegasus version of Big Mac who loves animals. Also Butterscotch is a terrible name for a character who was originally named for personality traits. Yeah, the "flutter" part of "fluttershy" is kind of a personality trait, in a pegasus.) In the end, I went with the genderswap and the traditional "Eris" name because Eris is a perfectly reasonable name for a chaos mage outside of the MLP framework.
So. A long time ago, the nation was ruled by a regency council that wielded something like the Elements of Harmony (basically, the Pillars). There are a lot of princes and princesses but none of them have been chosen to take over as King or Queen yet, and there's no primacy of birth thing -- any of them could be selected. However, Eris, who is one of the princesses, is younger than most of the others, a chaos mage, and has the kind of personality where she takes nothing very seriously, plays pranks a lot, and doesn't really want the responsibilities of being Queen. She's actually a lot like Rainbow Dash if Rainbow was a chaos mage instead of a jock. She's here to fiercely defend her country if she has to (and enjoy herself doing it), and otherwise, to laze around, play pranks and enjoy life.
The Regency Council fears her chaos powers, however, and they believe, for some reason, that she will destroy the nation if she's allowed to remain as one of the princesses -- maybe they think she'll conduct a coup against whichever sibling ends up in charge? This was never clear. But they believe they have to get rid of her for the sake of the nation. At least one of her siblings agrees, though not the ones most likely to actually be chosen as Queen. (Some Twilight analogue was her oldest sister and most likely to be selected.)
So they call her to a meeting and tell her they're going to make her Queen. She's surprised, and a bit weirded out, but also excited because maybe she didn't really want to be Queen but if the Regency Council thinks she has what it takes, she's sure they know what they're talking about. They tell her to take her chaos form (she is normally human, but when she is using her magic, she has a kind of draconequus-like thing going on with the wings and the horns that don't match, and she's taller and more bendy.)
Then they have her pose in a fierce way like she's going to attack, because, they tell her, her official portrait for coronation should show her ready and able to defend her nation. So she does it. And while she's in that pose, thinking they're about to paint her portrait and coronate her, they pull out their elements of harmony or the story equivalent, and turn her to stone. Then they tell her siblings she was planning a coup and no one could have stopped her with her chaos magic, and everyone just accepts that because they trust the Regency Council.
No one's immortal. When Eris finally gets out of stone, none of the people who stoned her are still alive. But there are wielders of the Elements of Harmony, and there is a Queen, and Eris feels that she should be queen because she was coronated and then betrayed (I am not sure she even realizes the coronation never really happened), so she tries to defeat the Elements and take over the country, yadda yadda. Also, it comes up that in her chaos mage form she has both sets of genitals and they both work, so though she looks female and identifies as female she is actually hermaphroditic. This ends up coming up because she takes a bi young man who really wants to get pounded by a woman as a lover. (This was not an important plot point and was probably just thrown in there by my dream to have an excuse to start to turn into an erotic dream, before my alarm went off.)
I never did get to the point of planning how she was defeated by the EoH, or later reformed, but I assume most of it went the way it did in MLP. If I was really filing off the serial numbers, I'd change it more significantly and probably have her defeat not involve being turned to stone, because unlike Discord in MLP she never deserved it in the first place. I knew that it was going to turn Fluttercord, though (Flutteris?), because the whole point was to get to the part that the first part of the dream covered.
This is actually sounding pretty cool and if I can figure out how to government-format the serial numbers so it really looks a lot less like MLP, I may do it. The structure may be harder to figure out than I thought, though, because, if it ends with "Fluttershy" rescuing Eris, then why is so much of it dedicated to Eris' backstory? "Fluttershy" needs a lot of buildup, too, and maybe the ending scene isn't the end of the story just because it was in the dream.
Damn, you have some pretty crazy complex and lucid (as in clear, not as in you’re aware you’re dreaming) dreams.
A lot of movies use in media res to get around this, like Deadpool and tangled and… Sigh,… Sonic the hedgehog
Fascinating. I'm glad you recorded this idea. I'd love to see what you with it, pony-related or no.
Interesting...
I've dreamed a few MLP fics, but never to this degree of detail. :D This sounds great in either form!
Case in point!
Last night involved Shining Armor being caged by changelings. There was a single passage of text involved, which went something like
Of course, Twilight's not dead. I think the mane six were just held captive in a different cage, but for some reason, he thought they were. :B
Not enough to hang a story on, but it made me think of this blog post, so I wanted to share. :D
Hey Alara, kind of random for the blog topic, but I've been getting into TNG lately (other than just Q episodes, I mean), so I thought I'd ask. Which of your old Star Trek fics would you say is your best? Any you'd recommend? And any particular episodes I should watch first to understand them?
You know, just by reading this I have come up with a rough sketch for the story, so as to make it less MLP.
If you want, I can give you the ideas.
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Sure. Can't promise I'll use them, but inspiration is always good.
This is pretty cool, I'd definitely read this.
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I'll send you a message with the link to the document.