//------------------------------// // Massively Self-Indulgent Acknowledgements & Credits // Story: My World Is Empty Without You // by McPoodle //------------------------------// My World Is Empty Without You Massively Self-Indulgent Acknowledgements & Credits In 2001, I posted my very first fanfic on The Acorn Café, the central forum for the 1989 Disney television series Chip ‘n’ Dale Rescue Rangers. The first thing I did after joining the forum was read every single Rescue Rangers fanfic that had ever been written—this was a small fandom, so it didn’t take long. Over the next eight years I wrote two more fanfics, each one harder to put out than the last. In late 2009, I had a sudden inspiration for a massive story that would encapsulate everything I felt for the cartoon, for the fans, and in fact for the very idea of “fandom” in general. The idea was so massive that I was forced to ask for co-writing help for the first time. A year later, the 107,000 word novel was finished and online. It was 2010, I was 38 years old, and I was done writing fanfiction forever. And then I discovered Friendship Is Magic. As soon as the first season stopped airing, I started writing. I wrote “The Invisible Hairless Ape” for Equestria Daily, started The Best of All Possible Worlds, and came up with the idea for At the Inn of the Prancing Pony. And while I was writing I was reading, reading every FIMfic that had ever been published on Equestria Daily, so I would know my audience and which ideas had already been tried out. One of these stories was “Feedback”, by Kegisak, a romance featuring a blind Vinyl Scratch. This inspired me to write a mock saga to comment on all of the sagas that everybody else was writing at the time, sagas such as It’s a Dangerous Business, Going Out Your Door, by Jetfire2012 (first published on Equestria Daily in April of 2011). There’d be some silly war between the ponies and the dragons, and the main character would be my version of Kegisak’s Vinyl Scratch, commenting on the battles of the gods like Howard the Duck. I submitted the first story in my saga, Javelin, to Equestria Daily on January 11, 2012. It was rejected. That’s when I discovered FIMFiction.net. Every story on that site got positive comments, no matter how poorly written I thought they were. I published Javelin there in July of 2012, and it was received well enough for me to continue writing. My “mock saga” didn’t stay as jokey as I intended it to be, and the quality of the sequels definitely varies from story to story, but overall I’m proud of what I’ve written. At the time I had an outline of the whole thing in my head, only some of which has survived all the way into the present. Vinyl saving the universe from Chapter 6 of this story was always going to happen. Rarity waking up from the dream during Accelerando came out of nowhere. And I had no idea what to do with Fluttershy’s dream. In July of 2013, a blog post commenting on the PonyEarthverse series of fanfics led to me collaborating with Hope for the first time. And that led to co-authoring on At the Inn of the Prancing Pony when that fic became too big to handle. So of course Hope was who I was going to turn to when I finally got around to writing my Fluttershy fanfic, eight years after starting this series. My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic is the property of Hasbro, brilliantly re-imagined from its prior generations by Lauren Faust. This story would not exist without her and her team at DHX Studios, now Allspark Animation. But this story in particular would not exist without Hope. Hope, I had a great time co-authoring with you on this story, and I hope we can continue to help each other out in the future. Your Fluttershy is my definitive fan version of the character, and I am in awe of how easily you write for her. Now, with that being said, let’s plow our way through the references. First of all, here are the characters in this story that don’t belong to me: Twilight Sparkle. Spike. Pinkie Pie. Rainbow Dash. Rarity. Applejack. Fluttershy. Vinyl Scratch/DJ Pon-3. Nightmare Moon/Luna. Celestia. Daring Do/A.K. Yearling (although they are not the same pony in this fic). Discord. Angel Bunny. Mage Meadowbrook. Cabelleron and his lackey Rough Stuff. Spitfire. Octavia. Ahuizotl. Gilda the Griffon. Twilight Velvet and Night Light. Other locations and concepts owned by Hasbro include timberwolves, the Wonderbolts, Pinkamena as Pinkie Pie’s real name, the Sonic Rainboom, the Elements of Harmony and their Bearers, Canterlot, the Staff of Sameness, Con Mare, the Best Young Flier Competition, and the Golden Oaks library. Prologue: Dream Control “My World Is Empty Without You” was written by the Motown trio of Holland, Dozier and Holland for The Supremes in 1965. It was released as part of the album I Hear a Symphony. “Thought Experiments” is the name of this half of the series, beginning with The Perfect Little Village of Ponyville. The title is a reference to being inside the “thoughts” (dreams) of the protagonists. Stalliongrad is a fan-created pony city corresponding to Stalingrad, the name that the Russian city of Volgograd had from 1925 until 1961. It was the site of a crucial battle during World War II, where the Nazis were defeated by the cold as well as the soldiers. So in my version of Equestria, it is the northernmost city populated by ponies. In my story [Redacted], I have the minds of the ponies of Stalliongrad taken over by the Dragon Emperor, leading the city to surrender itself to the dragons and thereby start the Second Pony-Dragon War. The scene observed by the unnamed dragon toady is the conclusion of my last story in this series, The Mistress of Dreams. The “Dream OS” section of this chapter is designed to resemble multiple operating systems I have interacted with, including Unix shells, Commdore 64 BASIC and MS-DOS. “Sudo” is the name of a Unix command to run a program under the alias of another user on the system. Strictly speaking, the Emperor should have been prompted to enter his password after the “sudo” command, making this an example of poor security practices. “Fluttershy” in quotes is actually the Dragon Emperor. “500pl” (as the radius argument to the dream.exe function adding the dreamers): Throughout the series, I have stubbornly insisted on measuring lengths using “ponylengths” and “ponyheights”, thereby side-stepping the whole Imperial/Metric debate. “^H”: On Unix terminals, the control code for backspace could be generated by pressing Control-H. On improperly-configured systems, this would be displayed as “^H” instead of actually backspacing. On Commodore 64 BASIC, typing the double quote character put you in “quote mode”, and any control keys you typed would then be represented as graphic symbols instead of being carried out. Since “Pinkie” starts with double quotes, that turned on the “^H”s. And that was way more information than you wanted to know about this joke. “Dusk Dawn” is one of the standard targets of the fandom, being supposedly the worst animated fanwork ever created for Friendship Is Magic. “Midnight Sparkle” on the other hand is the name given to the demon that human Twilight Sparkle transforms into in Equestria Girls — Friendship Games. “^C”: The TOPS-10 operating system used Control-C to abort running programs. This was adopted by Unix and MS-DOS. So just as “^H” became a joke about deleting something you don’t want someone else to see, “^C” became the 1970’s version of the “do not want” meme. “?SYNTAX ERROR.” The most frustrating thing I’ve ever seen on a Commodore 64. The robot/rocket subplot: That was from way back in [Redacted], so I suspect none of you were expecting it. Ancients: This series’ name for humans. For the gem, I quote from Javelin, Chapter 3: “You can’t joke about this gem,” a shaken Rarity told her. “Striking it would have very serious repercussions.” So that was one of the bits I had planned out from the beginning. Waking Terror: Character introduced in Whopper of the Year. The room with three sides: Masquerade. The Story So Far Time Lords: Reference to Doctor Who, property of the BBC. I needed them to get this series started, but I haven’t referenced them since The Trial of a Time Pony. Applejack’s lasso of truth: I never did anything with that one, did I? Ryooki the Cabbit: Character from the Tenchi Muyo! franchise created by Masaki Kajishima and Hiroki Hayashi. A cabbit is a fictional cross between a cat and a rabbit. I got her name wrong in But Wait…There’s More! Oars in Wells: A reference to a bunch of film villains played by Orson Welles, particularly those in The Third Man (1949), The Stranger (1946) and Touch of Evil (1958). Chapter 1A The jazzy song of [Fluttershy’s] self-discovery: Reference to the Season 1 FIM episode “The Cutie Mark Chronicles”. “Is this the [story] that’s been in limbo for months?” Well, it’s been a bit longer than that. Professor Stein: Modeled after professional boring person Ben Stein. “The exact same spot from which she had observed the anti-dragon mob on the night before war was declared”: Referencing a scene from [Redacted]. Daring Do being based on Rainbow Dash: That was what I thought after seeing “Read It and Weep”. Fluttershy being the true identity of A.K. Yearling: I got that one from The Many Secret Origins of Scootaloo, by defender2222. Chapter 2B The mare confronting Daring Do: Mauve Shadow before she had her personality switched. Mauve Shadow: Starlight Glimmer, obviously. Except this is Season 2, so it can’t actually be her. Chapter 2C The Staff of Sameness: In this story, Starlight’s lie from “The Cutie Map” episode is treated as fact: Mage Meadowbrook actually created it, albeit to tame wild animals. The Cruciform of Diversity as its counter is my creation. “The Shrimp” and the “Other Pony”: A reference to Short Round and the title character from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984). The former was good with explosives. An orrery is a mechanical model of the solar system. The one in this story is basically the device used by Twilight Sparkle in Season 9 of the series to control the sun and moon. The discussion of the Daring Do series: I riffed all of this after reading the mock article on TV Tropes about the series. The Seaponies: Another favorite fan victim, referencing the grating characters from the My Little Pony pilot Rescue at Midnight Castle (1984) as opposed to the characters introduced by the 2016 movie. Jack Maillard: Drake Mallard was a character from that Rescue Rangers novel I wrote in 2010. (A mallard is a type of duck.) The Maillard Reaction is the chemical explanation for how food browns when it’s cooked. And then you bring in the Barbeque of the Gods… Chapter 3A Ink-in: Ponied version of Incan. Chapter 3B The poem at the beginning is from “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”, by Robert Frost. In the 1977 film Telefon, a rogue Soviet agent uses the last line to active American sleeper agents and send them off on violent killing sprees. Daren Do is from that TV Tropes page I linked above. Pinkamena’s father as a disapproving worshiper of Nightmare Moon is from my earlier fanfic The Masterpiece. Chapter 4B Con Mare was the James Bond parody referenced in the episode “MMMystery on the Friendship Express”. Rainbow Dash’s long monologue references events from The Perfect Little Village of Ponyville and But Wait…There’s More! The idea of the Etheric—a radio program transmitted directly into unicorns’ minds—is from the latter story. The Celestial Era dates events from the moment when Celestia and Luna created the ponies. The pilot episode of the series occurred in the year 7010. Instead of months, dates are organized into seasons. “The needs of the many” is a re-phrasing of Jeremy Bentham’s “It is the greatest good to the greatest number of people which is the measure of right and wrong”, the founding statement of Utilitarianism. The phrasing you see here was used in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. Chapter 5B Hayan Empire: Mayan Empire. And the Asstecs are the Aztecs. Tenochtitlan: Capital of the Aztec Empire. The term is used unchanged in various Daring Do episodes of Friendship Is Magic. The mythological creature known as the ahuizotl also comes from the Aztecs. Ahuizotl’s Mother: The idea that Ahuizotl has a mother came from Daring Do and the Tiny Tornado by Metool Bard. The Griffon’s Goblet: This showed up at the end of “Read It and Weep” as the next Daring Do novel. I made the unoriginal decision to make it the Holy Grail from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989). “Hello darkness my old friend”: Opening lyrics to “The Sound of Silence”, written by Paul Simon in 1964 for the duo of Simon & Garfunkel. “Pinkie Pie’s my daughter”: As established in The Mistress of Dreams, the Sonic Rainboom sent Pinkamena into Limbo, where she met a goddess who followed her back into Equestria to become Pinkie Pie. Pinkie therefore considers Pinkamena and Rainbow Dash to be her parents. Fluttershy Parula Fluffykins: Parula is the name of Fluttershy’s mother in Accelerando. And Fluffykins as the name of Fluttershy’s ancestor is from The Best of All Possible Worlds. Neighpon as the name of Pony Japan: Correct me if I’m wrong, but this is a purely fan creation, right? Chapter 6A Cecil: Character introduced in The Perfect Little Village of Ponyville. I hadn’t really put any thought as to why the animated rock had the hots for Vinyl Scratch, until the comments for that story focused on that throwaway gag, so I decided to develop it here as well as I was able. That, and it sets a precident: if Twilight can create an imaginary version of Spike and Vinyl can create an imaginary version of Cecil, that frees up Pinkamena later to create an imaginary version of Mauve. The confrontation with the God Oars: Something I have been hammering at throughout this series is what kind of relationship mortals can have with gods that live in their midst. Vinyl has always been my spokespony in these scenes, her attitude inspired by Osysseus’ attitude in the 1997 TV miniseries version of The Odyssey. Vinyl’s song of defiance is taken from “Never Back Down”, written by Thomas J. Bergersen for Two Steps from Hell. Significantly, the line appealing to help from the gods is flipped on its head. Chapter 6B Fire Boom the Fifth, aka Rainbow Miriam Dash Fluffykins: Fire Boom is revealed as Rainbow Dash’s true name in Accelerando. Miriam is Rainbow’s middle name from the unfinished Fair Feather Friend by darthbobcat. The brown note is a hypothetical frequency that’s supposed to cause its victims to lose all bodily control. The red centaur form of Oars is Lord Tirek. Roameo and Jeweliette: I’m sure there’s better puns for Romeo and Juliet out there. Chapter 7 Ryooki turning into a spaceship: In Tenchi Muyo, Ryo-Oki is a genetically-engineered being capable of transforming into a spaceship. I can’t make up ideas this weird all by myself! Jeff: The name of the human the ponies visited in the never-to-be-written predecessor to Javelin. The spiral flight technique taught by Rainbow Dash’s mother: A reference to the character of Firebelle from At the Inn of the Prancing Pony, who is also an ancestor of Rainbow Dash. The photo of a pegasus throwing a discus: That and the Sports Wing of the Equestrian Museum are from Javelin. Epilogue: Spike “The griffons had worked for the dragons for centuries”: This is a variation of the story from The Best of All Possible Worlds, which can be considered an alternate reality to the series this story is in. In that story, the Diamond Dogs had worked for the dragons in the same capacity. The Dragon Code: From the episode “Spike at Your Service”. Castle By the Sea: The ancestral home of the alicorns in my story Luna and the Tree Ponies, and the location where the Dragon Emperor gained his power offscreen in [Redacted]. The Great Will: The god of another universe adjoining our own. Two of His subjects were sent to this universe to infect Luna and Celestia, and became Nightmare Moon and Waking Terror. The most likely cause of Multiple Personality Disorder: Child abuse. The Time of Troubles and the Night Army: These are purposefully empty references, designed to have the same effect as the following line from the Doctor Who episode “The End of Time” in describing the Time War: “the Horde of Travesties, the Nightmare Child, the Could-Have-Been King with his army of Meanwhiles and Never-Weres.” Of course, being Doctor Who, all of those proper nouns eventually ended up with a mountain of backstory behind them… Thirty thousand years of chaos shortened to a mere millennium: A reference to the Foundation series by Isaac Asimov. The trio of juvenile dragons: These are three characters from Invader Zim in dragon form: Tallest Red, Tallest Purple, and Zim himself. They spent the Pony-Dragon War disguised (badly) as ponies, which is why Spike doesn’t recognize them. Their primary appearance was in But Wait…There’s More! And finally, the Risking It All Team show was from But Wait…There’s Still More! Good night, good luck, and may you have a pleasant tomorrow.