Concepts & Creations: Dink · 4:36pm Aug 8th, 2021
Some of you might remember when I published a little story called Derp. That story existed for only one reason: to act as a prequel to another, bigger story called Dink. Alas, my promise to myself to stop writing Big Stories™ on FIMFiction means that Dink will probably never come to be. So how about I describe it for y’all?
Before we begin, it’s important to remember what Derp established. For those of you who haven’t read it yet, here’s your spoiler warning.
Derp focused on a chemist named Beige Beaker, a pegasus who taught at a college in Ponyville. She was happily married, had a kid named Pipette, and counted on Time Turner to be her best friend and research partner. Life was good. Then, out of nowhere and in the middle of a flight her eyes went crazy and her balance haywire, leading to a crash. Beige recovered, but her eyesight and balance never did. Over time, things got progressively worse for her, often for no logical reason. Ponies started calling her Ditzy or Derpy as if they’d actually forgotten her real name, her husband left her and their daughter with no warning at all, the college shut down, and she even began to lose her collected knowledge of chemistry, the information gradually fading away. In desperation, she went to Twilight Sparkle for help. This led to her being brought before Celestia who, after some coaxing from Twilight, agreed to reveal the truth.
That truth was that the entirety of Beige’s world was created and controlled by an OP race of creatures beyond her ability to comprehend. These beings treated Equestria like it was some play for the entertainment of children. More shocking, the vast majority of the creatures in Equestria weren’t even intelligent, thinking beings but merely puppets playing out parts. But, somehow, a few select individuals within Equestria now had sapience. Even their creators were baffled; ponies were never meant to have self-awareness. Celestia, Luna, Twilight, and Discord are all examples of this… and Derpy Beige is apparently the latest. Who knows how many more are out there?
But the entities that made Equestria mostly aren’t interested in the moral and ethical conundrums of these events. All they care about is making a fun and interesting story. As for Beige, they destroyed her life because of a mistake, and they have no intention of fixing it. After all, the target audience loves it. To make matters worse, practically all of the original creators have abandoned the project, leaving Equestria in the hands of less capable beings who are, for all intents and purposes, now using Equestria as a tool to write fanfiction (even if they all have to agree on the direction that fanfiction takes).
The story concluded with Beige effectively brainwashed and sent on her way, forced to be clumsy, unintelligent, but ever-cheerful mailmare Derpy. Yet not everything was taken from her. Through the efforts of a very few of the godlike entities who recognize the importance of the ponies gaining self-awareness and being sympathetic to Derpy’s plight, she is able to retain her ability to fly safely and keeps Pipette Dinky.
Dink would have been set a couple decades later. Dinky would have grown up to be a magical prodigy (I’m thinking a teacher at Celestia’s school). Except her mother is ill and nopony can figure out why, so she takes a vacation to head back to Ponyville. The sick Derpy begins saying strange things, calling Dinky “Pipette” and talking about how happy she was “they” let her keep flying. When Dinky tries to get a more full story though, Derpy shuts down, insisting they not talk about things that could catch “their” attention.
While tending to her mother’s home, Dinky uncovers an old journal belonging to her mother. In it she finally discovers the things she’d not understood or remembered from her youth: all the problems that came out of nowhere, her mother’s and her own real name, and a final note about how all hope was lost. Her mother refuses to speak of it and begs Dinky to leave the topic alone, but she refuses and goes to see Princess Twilight, who was mentioned in the diary as having been involved.
Twilight makes everything clear: the Builders, i.e. the entities that created Equestria, have abandoned it. Ponies don’t interest them anymore, so they’ve moved on to other projects. At first it’s not clear what this has to do with Dinky and Derpy, but as soon as the truth comes out all the things Dinky was blind to become startlingly clear: less popular non-sapient ponies are falling into comas because no Builders are puppeting them. Entire nations have been wiped off the map because there are no Builders to recall their existence and incorporate them into stories. Equestria is a disaster area, and somehow Dinky had never been able to see it. As for her mother, without the Builders to maintain things, the locks set on her mind to forget her true identity and limit her abilities are fraying. But they aren’t fraying in a stable way, so some things are fading while others linger, and it’s having a detrimental effect on her mind and body.
And she’s not alone. There were more self-aware ponies out there than even the Builders knew, and now they are left behind trying to pick up the pieces with no idea of why everything’s going wrong. Celestia, Luna, and Twilight could fix these issues by taking control, but they can’t do that. Why?
Because there is one Builder who refuses to let Equestria go. She goes by FlutterPie, and Equestria has become her playground. But she is only one mind that can only focus on so much. Anything outside her attention is nothing in Equestria, hence ponies in comas and the like. Worse, FlutterPie has absolutely no controls and can do anything she wants. She could create a romance between Twilight and Luna, then force them to break up so that Twilight and Rainbow can go on some epic adventure in which they get romantically involved, then put Celestia through terrible tortures, all for the sake of creating stories. And not even good stories; one reason FlutterPie stays in Equestria is because there’s nobody around to criticize her work and she has no interest in improving. Meanwhile, all the sentient ponies of Equestria can do nothing but suffer under her childish machinations.
Now, the way the story proceeds from here is uncertain. I know for sure that Dinky will refuse to accept things the way they are and mount a ‘campaign’ against this Builder. But as a Builder, FlutterPie is literally impossible to beat, and I’m not sure how Dinky would have gone about challenging her. I do know that we would gradually come to meet more self-aware ponies who would join in the ‘quest’. I also know that the ultimate solution lay not in their own actions but in contacting a powerful ally. With the help of Twilight, Celestia and Luna, Dinky is eventually able to contact one of the original creators of Equestria, a former Builder named Wicked who had shown kindness to Derpy.
When Wicked finds out what’s been happening in Equestria and discovers just how many ponies have become self-aware, she decides to help them. She doesn’t control Equestria anymore, but as an original Builder she can make some background adjustments. This allows her and the ponies to confront FlutterPie and force her to recognize the trauma she’s putting intelligent, innocent creatures through. FlutterPie resists abandoning her little fantasy land, of course. I’m not sure if they would have ‘forced’ her to abandon Equestria or simply told her what was necessary to get her to finally “grow up” and leave her playthings behind. With FlutterPie finally out of the picture, Wicked hands over complete control of Equestria to Celestia, Luna, and Twilight.
With the world recovering, ponies in comas wake up and many who hadn’t been self aware become so. Dinky, now going by Pipette, returns to her mother, once more Beige Beaker, and the two get to discover who they really are for the first time.
This is a highly simplified version of events, naturally. I had big ideas but no clear way to demonstrate them, and the climax in particular was nebulous in nature. But I’ve always wanted to write a “defying fate” kind of story and this was originally intended to act as one of those. And yes, the whole 'Builders' thing would serve as something of a meta-commentary on the fandom, but that would have been less the point and more of just a gimmick to support the real themes, i.e. the value of self-responsibility, the tendency for those in power to willfully neglect the effect of their actions on others, and taking control of one's life in defiance of all odds. I don't know if I'll ever write it on FIMFiction but, I may yet adapt an original fiction variant.
Other C&C's:
Runaway Train
The Gentle Nights: Silver Dreams
Histories: The Rise of Macromida
Histories: The Great Divide
As One Falls
Histories: One, Mother of Ponies
The Tale of Tom
Fleur-Verse: Agent Fleur
No Heroes: Nildean Roadtrip
No Heroes: Twelve Angry Ponies
No Heroes: The Changeling Incident
TvE: The Many Lives of Pinkie Pie
TvE: On Sunburned Wings
TvE: Pony at the Gates
TvE: Rise Against
TvE: Belle
TvE: At the Mausoleum of Twilight
Trixie vs. Equestria 2
The Silence
Needs of the Few
OoS: Little Surprise
OoS: The Good Mare
OoS: Trixie vs. Equestria
This is practically the MLP version of Redshirts!
Sounds meta and schizophrenic, a bit Truman Show-ish.
Is there a place we can find your current/future original fiction work?
5565845
Never saw Redshirts, so I wouldn't know.
5565848
I never thought of it that way, but you're right, it is kinda Truman Show-ish. Huh.
5565914
Current and future? Alas, no, as I don't really have any (unless you count the short story that will supposedly be published in an anthology next year). I've been trying to finish BPH 2 as my last big FIMFiction project before diving into OF properly.
If you're really eager and perhaps a masochist, you could always go to fictionpress.net and look for my username. I used to release original poems and stories there. But it was, like, two decades ago or longer and I wouldn't call anything I wrote in that time "good", at least not by my current standards.
5566187
It's a book by noted Science-Fiction author John Scalzi. It's a good read
5566290
Oh? I could have sworn there was a TV series by the same name. The more you know.
*Quietly adds book to list for later readings*
5566291
It's a homage to Star Trek and other space explorers shows. For a brief sense of what it is like, watch this vid, featuring Scalzi and Wil Wheaton during the book tour:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zz5S2x_tJ70