Unresolved Sexual Tension
They hammered out The Joyous Rules together.
Celestia had returned in time to keep her confused Guards from (as far as she knew) spreading stories of what had happened outside the castle walls: in fact, she'd managed to get back before medical help had removed Glimmerglow from the Hall Of Legends. So to the best of her knowledge -- and she was dearly hoping she had the complete picture -- news of the incident with Torque hadn't reached the public. Or worse, the press. But the only true test for either would be time --
-- and she needed that time to seal any other potential leaks.
She woke Luna, explained what had happened. And between them, they composed the full procedure list.
1. Everypony involved must be sworn to secrecy.
And that meant everypony. Her own Guards took the oath immediately, were more than willing to believe her when she told them Ambassador Power had not been at fault, there was something else going on and they had to trust her when she said they were not to look into it, letting her handle everything -- but she had the benefit of knowing exactly where their loyalties were. With other ponies...
And that led directly into the next directive.
2. Involve as few ponies as possible. Research everypony who might become part of this, then keep watch on all the ones who are.
They couldn't afford to let anypony in the so-called Loyal Opposition know about this -- not unless it was truly their last resort. (The sheer total of 'last resorts' was beginning to become overwhelming all by itself.) There was too strong a chance of such a pony going to the press no matter what the signed papers had dictated -- and while that was a chance Celestia would take if it was the only true means of saving Joyous, a failed attempt would break the story while there was still something active to report. Accusations of kidnapping, the palace holding a pony hostage to a pair of twisted desires, Murdocks' gossip pages spreading out to take over the ten percent of the newspaper they didn't already have -- and then, with the news out there, everything Torque had led Celestia's imagination into seeing would be threatening eruption into reality. Everypony they might consult had to be evaluated and understood on a level equivalent to ponies Celestia had known for their entire lives: anything else was taking too great a risk.
Which reminded Luna that there were other ponies already involved -- starting with her own Guards. Cluster was brought in, all of the Guards who had allowed Joyous into a singular Open Palace meeting -- everypony whom Joyous was known to have come into contact with was hauled into the castle, where the sisters mutually apologized for the disruption of their sleep schedule before Luna, who had been rehearsing the words while everypony was rounded up, brought out careful ways of asking just what had been found within what sleep might have come. All the answers were... expected. Redundant. 'Depressing' turned out to be automatic.
The researchers Luna had sent into the Archives: they needed to be formally sworn into what was rapidly reaching the status of a formal conspiracy. Those Celestia had used to cover the day shift were added to the numbers before the two crews were introduced to each other and told to start comparing notes.
Eventually, the castle personnel were covered -- but that still left holes. How many ponies had Joyous passed in the night on her way into the session? Had there been members of the Lunar staff wandering down exactly the right hall at precisely the wrong moment? What about Canterlot? Joyous had said she'd stayed in the air as much as possible, avoided the paths and made her own route to Canterlot from fear of meeting ponies along any of the standard routes, and that had been a help. But she'd landed in the city to scavenge food before heading to the Lunar session. She had done so several times, because she hadn't arrived in Canterlot on the night of the Open Palace and had needed to find ways of lasting out the waiting period. Had there been other ponies around when she'd touched down, beyond her sight? Had her hiding place in the clouds outside the city been passed by any pegasi? There was no way to know. All the Princesses could do was take some of their Guards into a higher level of confidence and tell them to be on the lookout for ponies whose behavior had turned obsessive -- and those Guards would need to say something to the city's police...
Keeping the secret meant spreading the secret. How far could they push it before it broke loose?
3. Ideally, the ponies who deal with Joyous should be --
-- and they'd run into a block on that one. 'Aged' didn't work: ponies generally didn't lose their full desire for physical contact as the years advanced. 'In possession of the world's most minimal sex drive' was no help: Joyous could potentially fan any ember into a conflagration. 'Asexual' was a term barely understood and, with ponies, hardly ever recognized -- plus they knew normal attractions were overridden in the presence of the pegasus, and that might easily include changing what had been a desire for nopony at all. Going for the few who only found their dreams satisfied by the members of the other intelligent races -- the same problem. And the more they narrowed the requirements, the more they potentially could eliminate anypony who might have been able to help at all. At one point, a sleep-deprived Luna had sarcastically proposed that they go with a single rule only: everypony brought in from that point on had to reside in the shadowlands. It had been followed by twenty seconds of mutual silent horror as they'd both formed images of what might happen if that barrier fell before Joyous.
Once the dual shivering had stopped, they'd revised the whole rule.
3. Everypony who meets her directly must be fully briefed on what she can do.
If they knew the attraction was being imposed from the outside -- that it was, in a sense, artificial -- if they knew it was coming at all...
...well, at least they wouldn't fall into the trap of thinking it was simply love (or lust) at first sight.
Initially.
And it all added up to the final rule:
4. Prepare an answer for the worst-case scenario.
Which begged the question of what that was.
The press learning about Joyous? Her falling into despair and fleeing, coming into contact with hundreds of ponies during her escape? Another nation trying to kidnap her? Coup attempts using her as that primary weapon? Fear-filled assaults aiming to keep her from ever being used? Everything the sisters thought of as 'worst' only led to another 'worst' beyond that -- and then another, followed by one extra, which then invited friends who took over the castle before razing both wings. The sisters laid out plans for everything they could think of -- then wondered if they'd thought of everything, and knew doing so was impossible.
Later, Celestia realized their actions had been very much like those for quarantining the bearer of a contagious fatal disease.
The second rule cost them two days.
Celestia hadn't kept a Royal Physician on staff for centuries. Her own health was... well, it was strong, but it wasn't perfect. She caught colds now and again, went through bouts with the flu two or three times a century (generally shivers and cold sweats: fevers never touched her), and had certainly taken her share of casual hurts, strains, and aches, with a number of backlashes thrown in. And when any of those had brought her to a point where there was no other answer available, she'd reluctantly trotted to a doctor for help. Doctors who, no matter how many dark looks and non-veiled statements and outright orders she gave them, could never completely stop seeing her presence as their chance to be the first pony who would unravel the mysteries of the alicorn body. For Celestia to check herself in with a sore throat was to inevitably wind up verbally (and twice, physically followed by magically) fighting off inspections of horn and wings while amateur thaumaturgy students tried to figure out how a single field could channel both pegasus and unicorn magics -- and then there were bombardments of questions about her metabolism, the internal clock which some ponies had deduced the existence of, any potential alterations to her skeletal structure which allowed her body to bear her total mass without strain, expressions of desires to get a look...
Keeping a personal physician on the castle payroll had felt like giving somepony an open offer to try sneaking into her bedroom and attempt the fresh stealing of blood and fur samples every week. For starters.
So two days passed while both Solar and Lunar staffs searched for doctors who could be brought into the group -- two days which the sisters used to sort through the Canterlot Archives in search of anything which would avoid it. And the joined powers of Day and Night, well over a millennium of combined knowledge and experience, working with the largest collection of information in Equestria...
...came up with nothing.
As far as they could discover, Joyous' mark was unique. As for her talent -- there had been ponies whose sex appeal had been legend: stories about them had made it into the Archives, although there was some trouble in sorting historical record from fantasies which the authors had been trying to pass off as such (and neither category was exactly helpful reading material for two sisters whose nightscapes were still featuring repeated flashes of reflected light off a certain metallic coat). But none of those ponies had that appeal as their actual recorded talent. (Luna's staff uncovered accounts of two ponies whose mark-backed skill seemed to have been the act itself -- in the fiction section. Typically, the characters had only been interested in each other and the plot had suffered accordingly, at least for what little existed. It hadn't affected the dialogue, mostly because once you took out the moans which no pony throat was capable of producing in that kind of consecutive forty-second vowel string, there really hadn't been any.) Either the Archives had failed to record any instance of the talent manifesting -- or it had appeared for the first time within a pegasus who had reached the point of seeing blasphemy as her last hope.
New means of stopping marks... again, only in the fertile imagination of storytellers. There had been some faint hopes of a tale being based on an actual event and research had been done into anything which claimed a historical setting or to have been 'based on a true story' -- but in the end, every last crop of verbiage had sprung up from fields of horse apples. (The Daring Do cycle had two instances of its own, although the second had come about because the means used to halt the first had worn off.) And nothing discussed the issues of a talent strengthened beyond its owner's control, not even the most tail-curling of horror stories. The concept had simply refused to appear in any writer's mind. In a way, it was something no pony could imagine happening -- and so no pony had until Joyous experienced it, with her pain conveying the idea to Celestia and Luna, followed by them bringing it to the attention of their assistants. And once the concept had been unleashed, it had inevitably found its way into multiple nightscapes. Luna's duties had included several emergency visits to those on both staffs: simple talents for organization created worlds in which nothing spontaneous ever happened, researchers found nothing left to learn, and specialists in magical theory watched their experiments destroy everypony they'd ever loved.
For the portion of history which Celestia had overseen, they found nothing. For that which had come before the Diarchy... most of that had been lost: Discord hadn't been one for the keeping for records and destruction of the oldest accounts might not have been deliberate, but it had been casual. They had stories, legends, and a few surviving documents which probably hadn't been forged. Peer through the fog to find more fog beyond, wander deep within and become lost.
Two days during which the Archives provided no help. A pair of cycles where the few researchers they'd trusted came up with no theories worth chasing. Time that found the Princesses going back to Joyous, delivering food, trying to assure her that they were working on the problem while in no way revealing just how much of a problem it was turning out to be. Not telling her about all the extra issues which could become realities at any moment. About the threat she might pose to Equestria and the lands beyond. The risks which seemed to increase with every passing day, the chance of slippage and revelation going up with every pony brought in.
They tried to supervise each other during those visits, but mostly when one sibling realized the other was gone and figured out where. One sometimes arrived bearing a meal only to find the other had beaten her to it by several minutes, which was especially interesting to Celestia when one of those junctures turned out to be lunch -- a chance meeting which required Luna to be awake at noon. The food itself was becoming increasingly exotic and elaborate.
Books had been replaced in the semi-cell. Furniture had been updated. Luna had run through eight different beds in the course of two hours, with square acreage of mattress as her apparent primary consideration.
And Joyous was -- hopeful. Alive with that hope, because there were two Princesses working on the problem and surely nothing under Sun or Moon could stand up to such a combined assault...
At one point, Celestia had gone to Joyous at a moment when she was convinced her urges would be at their lowest, having worked through water and ice and -- other measures -- with a single intent: to try and perceive the pegasus as she truly was. Perhaps it was only the talent that rendered her beautiful, clouded minds and made them believe in a vision worth drinking in over a lifetime. And to that end, she'd brought a camera, because her mind could be fooled by such a trick -- but the film wouldn't be. Even if the illusion persisted and made her see something which wasn't there in the captured image, showing the picture to a pony who'd never been near Joyous would reveal the truth.
Celestia had taken the picture, somehow forced herself to leave immediately, and then personally developed the film before taking it to an artist she trusted, one who was capable of rendering the image into a painting at speed -- especially in the wake of a Royal Commission to do so. Eight hours later, she'd gone back to pick up the result. And in doing so, had made a discovery.
The pegasus was more beautiful than she'd been at their first meeting.
Oh, there was no magic involved: Joyous wasn't changing to reflect Celestia's tastes -- and magic-created physical alterations beyond the most minor cosmetic ones to coat and mane were matters best not thought about, lest the echoes of long-ago screams intrude on present hearing. But the young mare had been surviving in the fringe for several years. Her diet had consisted of whatever she could find within added to occasional scavengings from the city plus far too much grass and the bare survival it just barely provided. Add the slow-drip wearing down of endless stress from knowing what her talent had done to her life, the means she had tried to rid herself of it, just being in the fringe... it all added up. Celestia, looking at the transferred portrait, forced herself to think -- and realized that on the first day, the pegasus had been on the thin side. The glint from the coat had been as uneven as the fur itself. The mane hadn't been formally taken care of since the exile had begun. Her hooves had shown some chipping and the lack of proper nutrition was also reflected in faded feathers. The pegasus who had come to Luna that night had shown all the signs of the pain she'd brought with her: body, voice, eyes, and soul.
And now some of that burden was beginning to lift.
She was eating properly, if rather exotically and at expense levels normally only seen in full banquets for visiting royalty. She had enjoyed her first hot bath in years, then had two more just for the renewed joy of it. She was -- taking care of herself, because there was a sudden hope for a life singing in her heart and surely it couldn't hurt to prepare for that life, just a little? So feathers had been preened. She'd styled her mane. The metallic coat was clean and brushed and heading back towards its true shine.
Joyous was a natural beauty, one on Fluttershy's level, with the rarity of being a metallic added to that. The fringe, the fear, her talent had worn her down -- but now the living art was being restored. It was still a work in progress. But when she truly reached her peak...
...and if her magic had somehow been weaker because of that barely-existence, if that came to its full potential...
Joyous had accepted the photography. After all, Celestia was doing it, so it might be something which would help. She had smiled for the camera. Smiled for the first time since coming to the castle.
She had hope.
And it made her beautiful.
Celestia had stared at the portrait for a full five minutes. It had taken her that long to completely suppress the need to weep.
It had taken two days for the combined forces of the Lunar and Solar staffs to select a doctor -- or, as it ultimately turned out, two, as what turned out to be their best possibility only worked as a team. And their staffs had selected those practitioners using a rigorous set of standards. They had to be completely loyal to the Diarchy. They needed to understand that the secret could not be allowed to spread. Compassion, intelligence, insight, intuition, the ability to see 'pony' instead of just 'patient' or worse, 'interesting case study' -- all were crucial and the ponies who had presented the names to Luna and Celestia as their final selection had assured them that every last quality was possessed in abundance..
It took very little time for Luna to realize that they should have added one additional requirement.
"So... um... we finished examining her..." began the smaller of the two unicorn stallions, the skinny one with the pale white coat (and wearing a light blue garment with many pockets all over it), brown eyes, and -- that mane. A mane which Luna's nose told her was filled with every mane enhancement product known to ponies plus a few which might have been home-brewed, a mane which stood straight up in defiance of physics, common sense, and taste. It was black. It was glossy. It was slightly curly. It had volume, mass, weight, and possibly gravity. There was every chance it had graduated medical school before its owner through having taken better notes, although it would have been hard-pressed to beat out the tail which qualified for its own entry in the census.
"And we were very careful!" rushed the larger. This one was an exceptionally rich, almost gleaming brown (mostly covered by a garment which was an odd shade of green), muscular for a unicorn, with eyes to match his coat and a soft black tail. As for the mane -- he didn't have one, and it was a deliberate choice. Very few ponies shaved their manes, but the non-fashion was most often found in surgeons. The hair of a mane did not block a field: it was one of the few things which presented no barrier at all to the initial projection of unicorn magic. But unicorn surgeons, whose control had to be especially refined, were prone to think things like maybe it only blocks about a thousandth of a percent for anypony, but I'm going to need that -- so some of them shaved their manes away. This stallion was one of them, although Luna wasn't sure that was his full justification for the act. There was every chance he might have just looked at his partner's display and decided his only reasonable choice in life was to personally go as far away from it as possible in the exact opposite direction.
"We didn't do anything inappropriate, Princess!" the smaller assured her -- then looked at Celestia. "And Princess! -- Princesses? Princessi?"
"'Princesses' will suffice for mutual address," Celestia told him --
-- and was ignored. "Nothing happened!" the larger insisted. "I kept an eye on him the whole time!"
"What do you mean, you kept an eye on me?" the smaller verbally jumped in. "I watched you!"
"Did you really think I was going to let you have any time alone with that mare?"
"I just wanted you to get an instrument!"
"A cup of wake-up juice is not an instrument!"
Luna looked at the diplomas hung on the walls. They seemed to be legitimate.
"We had to test her reaction to stimulants, didn't we?"
"And why would we ever have to do that?"
"So we can compare it to the results when we try something opposite later!"
"Oh, and I suppose you think you're so special because your big diagnostician brain thought of that?"
"At least I didn't need to cut anything open to come up with it!"
Surely her staff would have looked into whether the medical school actually existed.
"That wasn't cutting! I took some fur, mane, feather, blood, and saliva samples! You said you needed those to work with!"
"And do you know how close you were when you did it?"
"Am I supposed to be on the other side of the room when I'm collecting?"
"You're a unicorn! So -- yes!"
"You're a unicorn too!"
"What's your point?"
Or perhaps it had largely been the Solar staff...
"You're acting neurotic! You were waving empty vials in the air and jamming stoppers on them!"
"It's the Princesses! Of course I'm acting neurotic! Because this is making me neurotic! I am neurotic! Almost as neurotic as you! I'm just the pony who's willing to admit it! And I was just trying to get a sample of her smell!"
Luna forced herself to take a very slow breath. They'd teleported Joyous back to the castle immediately after the examination, in the name of limiting exposure. It seemed to be having a beneficial side effect, mostly in that whatever hope the pegasus was truly beginning to possess surely would have fled at the realization that her fate was now potentially in the hooves of these two. "Doctor Bear --"
"-- yes?" A chorus from both.
Of course. Luna tried again. "Doctor Vanilla Bear -- are the samples truly necessary?"
"Absolutely," the physician failed to reassure her. "You'd be amazed how often we pick up things just from taking them. In fact, you might be amazed that the single most frequent weapon in our arsenal is the collection of --"
"-- oh, not this again," Doctor Chocolate Bear groaned. "If you start singing..."
The thinner stallion's voice dropped a little, which made him sound very slightly less like a mare. "Are you criticizing my singing?"
"It's a song about horse apples."
"Because everything comes down to horse apples! Isn't that worthy of a song or two?"
"It's not even worth a stanza. Or in your case, a standza-there-and-let-me-do-all-the-vocal-workza!"
"How does that even make sense? All you did was za twice! You didn't even shizzle!"
"It doesn't! Just like your song! Everything does not come down to horse apples! And now we're saying 'horse apples' in front of the Princess! Princesses! I just said it two more times! We keep talking about horse apples -- look what you're making me do! There's probably a jail sentence for this! There could even be a forced diet!"
Celestia blinked. This helped nothing, which incidentally meant 'shizzle' remained undefined.
"Okay!" Vanilla Bear yelled, his field (the color of which matched his garment) throwing a clipboard into the air in frustration. "Everything does not come down to horse apples! Except when it does! Are you happy now?"
Chocolate Bear caught the clipboard in his own field (which matched his own covering in hue) and tossed it back to the smaller stallion. "How can I be happy when your entire life is currently built around sending me to prison?"
Vanilla Bear's field lunged for the clipboard and completely failed to snag so much as a corner of it. The wood rectangle stuck in his mane, which took the weight without a single hair being shifted. "And your entire life is about making me look bad! Which is worse than prison! Because I have to live in a jail of the soul!"
The argument, which had already worked its way backwards from doctorate-bearing professional through college and into remedial teen courses, made a dash for elementary, overshot, landed in preschool, decided it was happy there, and began working on a sand castle with a very large moat to keep all maturity out.
Luna glanced up at her sister. Softly, "I believe we should have added 'sane' to the list?"
Celestia just barely held back the groan. Whispering, "They're the best."
"Really," Luna mused. "At what?"
Celestia looked the pair over. "I'm trying to remember..."
Luna sighed. Resuming normal volume, "While I normally dislike interrupting the debates of a married couple --"
Which stopped the argument just as it was about to leave the verbal level and head for the happy world of kicking horse apple patties, which everything had been about to come down to.
"We're not married," said Chocolate Bear, with a hint of insistence.
"We're not," added Vanilla Bear, although he looked decidedly more disappointed about it.
Luna blinked. This also helped nothing, but with twice the power behind it. "But -- your names..."
"Coincidence," Chocolate Bear told her. "And luck."
"We got assigned as roommates in college," Vanilla Bear chimed in. "Because they were going alphabetically by last name. For the ponies who had them. We've worked together ever since."
Chocolate Bear nodded. "But we're not married."
"Absolutely," Vanilla Bear told the sisters. "But you know -- if we were..."
The thin stallion tilted his head slightly to the right and looked up. He also stopped blinking. And then he kept looking up without blinking. He breathed. Luna presumed he had a heart and that it was functioning, although she wasn't willing to make the same bet regarding his brain. But beyond maintaining basic life support for himself, staring up (and slightly to the right) was all he did.
The siblings put up with it for thirty seconds.
"Is there something wrong with him?" Luna directly inquired.
"It's -- hard to explain..." Chocolate Bear awkwardly offered.
"Try."
The white head came back down. The clipboard didn't shift. A very distant-seeming voice mused "...but we'd never figure out who gets custody of the train..." Everypony stared at him. Vanilla Bear didn't seem to notice. "The thing is, Princesses -- your Highnesses? -- we've been together for years. We studied together. We graduated together, we went through our internships together, we worked together all the way and that meant ultimately, we learned together. We turned into the best medical partnership our hospital ever saw. And when they wouldn't acknowledge that in a way that meant -- well, acknowledging it -- I finally gave up on getting the respect, let alone the love, of that red-maned piece of --" He blinked. "-- um.... anyway, we went into private practice together. We are a team. And I promise you, given a case like this -- one where Joyous' life is truly on the line -- we will do everything we can to save her. That's our duty as doctors."
Chocolate Bear nodded and smiled. His teeth were dazzlingly white. "We owe her no less than our best, Princesses. And our best is the best there is. She's in the finest medical fields in Equestria."
No, that would be possessed by the curmudgeon in Pranceton whom I wouldn't trust not to trot Joyous into his supervisor's office and use her to gain himself a raise. Followed by whatever other abuses he could come up with before finally tackling the issue after three days of stalling and self-amusement while claiming his subconscious was at work the whole time. You two are what was left. "Which is why she was brought here, gentlecolts," Luna managed. "When can we expect the results of the tests?"
Awkward glances were exchanged.
"Well..."
"...these things can take time..."
"...we have to eliminate possibilities..."
"...sometimes using eliminations to do it -- all right, I won't sing! -- and we have to go over things, compare notes, make sure we're not on a false path..."
"...so -- two, three..."
They stopped.
"Two or three," Luna forced herself to say with something which she would have earlier hoped still resembled patience and currently no longer truly cared about the sound of. At all. "Hours, perhaps?"
"Days," Vanilla Bear shakily said, his full attention on the sudden flare of field corona around Luna's horn.
"Which --" Chocolate Bear's field pulled at the neck of his garment as the first stars began to swirl. "-- could turn into -- weeks..."
"...or more..." Vanilla Bear just barely got out. "And we might -- need extra samples -- so we can run more tests -- and -- more tests -- there's a lot of testing involved here... it's like exams..."
His head tilted up and slightly to the right.
They waited.
After two minutes, they stopped.
"We'll await your results," Celestia told them. "You know how to contact us. But we hope you'll understand if we continue independent attempts during that period." It was not an order. Orders generally weren't that polite.
"Of course," Chocolate Bear said. His field tugged at the garment's neck again. A stream of sweat ran through the gap. "But we will do our best, Princesses. I promise -- for both of us."
The sisters nodded, and turned to leave.
"Cadance?" Celestia tiredly whispered.
"Cadance," Luna wearily agreed.
From behind them, "...but I'm allowed to show up naked, I'm a pony... Chocolate Bear?"
"What's up, Vanilla Bear?"
"We're a little bit married."
"...yeah."
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NEW CHAPTER OF THIS? THIS IS THE BEST POSSIBLE THING!
3301835 that bromance XD
Chocolate Bear X Vanilla Bear OTP. I demand spin-off!
God those two are the best!
I can see it now...Canterlot the site of a singularity of all love and lust in Equestria because THEY BROUGHT IN CADENCE AND IT WENT WRONG.
It's guy love! Between two guys!
They'll be pudding everywhere!
Best sentence I've read all month.
No! You fools! Satisfying basic physical and psychological needs will only make the desire for self-actualization stronger!
What have you done? WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?!
>>>Coup attempts using her as that primary weapon?>>>
You know, that would backfire horribly on the nation that attempted it. Anyone from that nation in contact with her would lust after her, and they'd end up slaughtering each other to be the only one to possess her.
You see, that's the one advantage of her power affecting ALL races: whomever gets too close to her will become obsessed with her, and any thoughts of using her as a weapon, which would mean sending her away and putting her life at risk, would immediately be disregarded and replaced with thought of extraordinary lewdness.
Yesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyes! Oops, sorry...
Anyways, thanks for this chapter, it was super scrubalicious!
I can't wait to read more about the Princess's quest to
have sexy time withsave Joyous!And so, the poor mare will end up committing suicide anyway, believing at last her horrible torture will end.
Alas, then Sombra shows up and performs necromancy upon her...
Her only true freedom can come if she climbs Mount Orodruin and casts herself into the fires of the Cracks of Doom, where she was forged, and the only place her mark can be truly unmade. For she is... the One Pony to Screw Them All.
Everypony that gets near her: "My... prrrrreciousssssss..."
Vanilla Bear and Chocolate Bear are totally heterosexual life partners
Or maybe they're vitrolic best buds?
I like how you are handling the issue of Joyous' cutie mark. It could be very crass but you are handling it well.
The pony of love and the pony of lust in the same room together.
This is starting to sound more like a clopfic.
Glad to know I'm not the only one who misses Scrubs.
Great chapter too. I love seeing truly paranoid levels of preperation and concern from the Princesses, including their continued realization that they still can't guard against every contingency. It is, of course, the only appropriate reaction, and somehow lets the story maintain gravitas even in the face of our favorite doctors.
DID YOU JUST PONIFY SCRUBS I LOVE YOU
But Chocolate Bear is married.
And where's Caramel Bear?
Why do I get the feeling that V&C were having a flashback that I wasn't privy to? ...I WANT THAT FLASHBACK!!!
Oopsy. Indoor voice. Please?
Wait that was a scrubs reference?
Ooh, I like these guys.
Does this curmudgeon also have a bum leg and pop painkillers like candy, perhaps?
the clop potential of this story... limitless...
love the new addition of the doc-duo... crazy as they are
yeah House would not be good here. like at all. blood in the streets
they should hire him anyway. It would be so fun watching everything burn around him.
This story just keeps getting better. I love how the unique central concept of a Special Talent out of control is being handled, & that although its a talent related to sexual attraction the story isn't a clopfic & I hope it stays that way.
I really hope Joyous can be helped. The poor girl was starting to get her hopes up & for that to be taken away from her may start her thinking that she has only one way out...
The thought occurs that the Princesses should be thanking their lucky stars (even the ones they control) that Joyous herself doesn't want to exploit her talent. The weapon using itself isn't on their long, long list of problems (Yet).
*looks around at fresh Comments crop*
...yeah, it's probably a good idea to tackle some of this...
3300709
The situation is this (while daisies were not pushed): shortly before you posted that, someone else asked me if they could try cover art. We were just starting into my part of the '...why would anyone want to do that?' when you put your image up.
So I'm pulling out the More Than One Person Actually Drew Something plan which I've had sitting around in the Impossible file since day one: in case of multiple cover art pieces, I will cycle between submissions on a semi-regular basis. Yours will go up shortly after I finish this post --
-- and thankee for your time and effort. (I'd use the GASP! icon for the level of surprise here, but there's that twenty-in-a-row limit...) I just hope this didn't force too many crashes, errors, and 'Sorry: your request is impossible. Shall I load Minesweeper?'
It feels very weird to have someone going to war against a computer program on a character's behalf. I don't think of things in terms of what it might take to truly render them visually, and so I never considered what a potential nightmare the idea of metallic coats would be...
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*flees country*
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No, it's stallion love between two stallions!
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We don't talk about Caramel Bear.
Every time I think I've had an idea no one writer has hit before me, it always turns out to be because about twenty-eight already did. But I thought there was a good chance lots of people were going with Greg, leaving a couple of other medical professionals out in the cold despite their eight seasons of hard work. After that, the hardest part was picking the names -- which really shouldn't have taken as long as it did.
Yes, there were only eight seasons. Shut up.
Liking the Scrubs reference =) .
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Of course there were only 8 seasons.
Where could they have gone from he leaves the hospital?
Following the story of a bunch of new interns at a new hospital? Don't be absurd.
weknowgifs.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/scrubs-eagle-gif.gif
But enough of that.
Despite the often times hilarious way you write these stories, you've made Equestria a rather dark place. Nothing works, no one is in charge (not really anyway), every one is either stupid, evil, or so wrapped up in their issues that it's a wonder they haven't broken their necks. But that's it isn't it? Anything less would take away from the stories and make them less. It's kinda sad really.
But, I have a question. You mention the Murdocks a lot, and here you say they own all but 10% of the newspapers. Have you given any thought to writing a story where in a valid, reliable, (wholly fictional), up an coming, radical, (insert more desirable adjectives here), newspaper starts printing in direct opposition with the Murdocks?
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(This is written in haste on the way out the door, so I may edit a bit later.)
Actually, the line there is more that the gossip pages could be argued to take up 90% of a given edition for the newspaper, which is how they get sales. The Loyal Opposition has a lot of publications, but they don't control that kind of majority. On the whole, however, the 'quality' of most journalism ends up earning the quotes.
But there are publications which are more neutral, if not of higher writing standards -- and a few even try to use big words. There's even a couple which put a Princess-favorable slant on things. We just don't hear as much about them because they're not something the palace generally has to worry about beyond the concerns about having them just plain get it wrong or go too far in the 'everything they do must be right' direction.
If things worked all the time and the world along with every pony in it was perfect, stories would be somewhat harder to find. This is supposed to be a hard problem: it has to challenge the Princesses. And they're in charge -- it's just that no matter how good a job you're doing, there will always be someone who hates you because you're in charge instead of them. (For starters...) But they're not omnipotent or anything close to it.
Disagree on everyone being stupid, evil, or completely self-absorbed, but that's my POV and therefore probably wrong. They are, however, ponies. Except for the one who are minotaurs. And griffons. And arguably evil self-absorbed rabbits.
...
Scrubs _and_ House references?
Oh, my, you _spoil_ us!
But seriously, Nice chapter. Keep it up.
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I meant it all in the most positive way possible. You some how manage to maintain the idyllic facade that the show portrays while completely undermining it with a harsher reality that lies just beneath the surface. It's eerie/haunting/disquieting... it's like you took the experience of living in a suburb and added ponies.
As to the evil/stupid/broken necks. Exageration is my sweet tea of writing. This story shows it the least, but with the rest, except for at a few key points, tend to have all the main characters getting in each others way. I can't tell you how many times I've had to stop myself from screaming at my phone as I read because one of the characters could fix everything if they would just say one little word. It is aggravating. It is frustrating. Mostly, though, it is absolutely wonderful.
Most authors fail at giving every character their own motivations and desires. The good guys always seem to be working together, except where there will be a betrayal. In my-- admittedly limited-- reading, the only examples I can think of that do this as well as you are the late, great, Robert Jordan and (not so late unless you are counting the time between books) J.R.R. Martin.
It took till the last line for me to realize that was a scrubs reference, I am ashamed
To all those arriving from AR15, I'd like to say two things.
1. Heya.
2. I have now discovered something more difficult than the sisters solving the Joyous problem: searching your website. Any direct link takes me to the Forum front page, which doesn't seem to have any visible internal search function. Any attempt to use a full search engine redirects to the wrong section (even when searching for the direct URL) and if I click on any pony link in another thread, it generally takes me to the Forum front page or a defunct discussion. And I'm only clicking those because the main thread? Seems to be invisible, plus direct-links-see-above.
Gah.
Is this a means of discouraging non-members from looking around? If so, it works very well for making people consider becoming members because after twenty minutes of trying to see what the referral post looked like, I really want to shoot something.
Of course, it's also possible that your site is not at fault in any way and this is just Firefox showing off yet another one of its oh-so-lovable quirks again.
...urge to shoot something not exactly going away...
ETA: Yes, I did resort to opening Internet Explorer and trying the direct link there. End result: Loveable Quirks Part II, Microsoft Edition.
For my next trick, I will now attempt to make John Sterling into a fully neutral play-by-play announcer.
(Roughly 92% of the readership is staring at the above sentence in total confusion. Part of the remainder is trying to breathe regularly before the laughter cracks a rib.)
Okay, this fic has been a terrific read.
Joyous' mark is so wonderfully silly - a butt on her butt! - and it's a delight to watch Luna and Celestia getting more and more exasperated and horny... but when you think about it a little bit more, you realize how terrible a life poor Joyous has been leading, and how utterly disturbing her "All shall love me and despair!" effect is.
It makes the whole fic teeter right there on the line between "This is really funny" (
) and "You know, this isn't funny at all, not in the slightest" ( 
). Well done!
I can't believe how much fun I'm having reading this.
Also, bromance is the best romance.
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Uhhhhh ... published by accident I guess.
Lucky-y-y-y.
3366714 huh?
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He means chapter 6 has disappeared again, so either Estee accidentally hit the "publish" button before he was ready and we managed to catch it before he unpublished it, or he just accidentally hit "unpublish" and hasn't realized it yet.
3366739 oh. Well you guys are in for a treat. It's by far the best chapter yet, and a nice long 10,000 words too!
Those last few lines were Brotherhood(aka: the fic with the "ambigiously" gay Mormon ponies) levels of gaydorkable
Oh my GOD.
How did I not see that they were Turk and JD until the very last line?! I am personally ashamed that I didn't see that sooner.
That painting is too powerful; it (and the photograph) must be destroyed, and never recreated. Because it's a horrifying concept that what everyone has experienced so far is with Joyous's talent effectively on the Low setting because she was basically skin and bones. I shudder to think of the effect when she's actually healthy looking.
Destroy that painting now while they still have the will to do so.
I think I might trust Dr. Cox a little bit more than our vanilla and chocolate bears, or at the very least Elliott. Love the reference still.
I wonder why changeling magic hasn't gotten involved yet. Rumors have it that changelings can turn ponies into changelings, but even should that prove false, surely a changeling would be able to see through the illusion of her mark.
Well, that or it would work too well, and suddenly all changelings would make it their number 1 priority to possess the most love magic saturated pony in existence.
You know what? Forget I said anything.
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and then it turned to a sing-ularity, and became awful and terrible for everyone involved
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There is an easy solution for that.
Countersong.
Start up a heartsong, and sing the song that never ends. In other words, break the universe.
What on the deep pits of Tartarus is going on with those two doctors?
6312441 Counter the counter song with the song that gets on everybody's nerves.
Scrubs and a House reference. Brilliant.
Woah. Foreshadowing for chapters 9 and 10! ... How many chapters will there be? Hmm... ... 11 seems way too short, 13? 15 at most, is my guess.