Twilight's convinced Discord hasn't really reformed, and has found a weapon to replace the Elements -- a reforming spell Discord missed eating. But panicking an entity like Discord is probably never a good idea. And Twilight's about to learn that the good intentions that pave the road to hell don't make the destination a nicer place to live...
There is now a Progress Bar. Part of "Next of Kin to Chaos", my Discord-as-Q series, set after "Negotiating Terms" and before "Hit Me".
(Note: gets a Dark tag but this is not super dark; after all if Discord destroyed the universe he'd find he had nothing to play with later, and both "Hit Me" and "The King Who Would Be Man" happen after this story.)
A page for this series now exists: Next of Kin to Chaos
Hmm. Characters of Twilight Sparkle and Discord seems on the spot, per your usual writing. Well, except for one thing. Somehow i don't think Twilight would cast the reforming spell on Discord without Fluttershy agreeing with it, or without knowing the consequences of her actions up front.
Asking Spike instead of Fluttershy for his opinion gave me some flashbacks into Return of Harmony (when he replaced RD), and look how that turned out.
Also as she is portrayed in your stories, she seems to seek guidance from the Princess like in the original series, and it strikes me as odd that she wouldn't check the spell with them as well while she was in the libraries looking for it.
Maybe you will cover that in the other chapters of the story, but for now i just had to point it out.
P.S. Still loving it, cannot wait for the next part. Ever since i saw that this side story may be published, i simply couldn't wait to see it.
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Some good points. I think Twilight originally had no intention of using the spell on Discord, merely on using it as a threat to get him to behave himself, but Discord likes stirring up trouble and has managed to turn what was supposed to be a conversation into a fight, with all of the overcharged emotions that go with a fight. Twilight's convinced she knows what she's doing, and her emotions are getting away with her because firstly, Discord went out of his way to seriously piss her off (and all her friends), and secondly... Twilight has her own dark side. She's enjoying the fact that Discord is scared of her. If anypony pointed *out* to her that she's enjoying that Discord is scared of her, she'd probably deny that that factors into her motivations, but it totally does. She's very righteous and sees herself as motivated by justice and fairness, and like most people with such motivations (and probably most ponies), she has little empathy for "bad guys"... she has power, she wants to use it to protect the innocent and defeat the guilty, and after quasi-threatening Applejack's family, filling Rarity's bag with hornets, and sticking Rainbow Dash's wings on Applejack (and reshelving all Twilight's books), Discord has riled Twilight up to the point where it's not registering that everything he's done has been a *prank* and nopony's gotten hurt from any of it.
All that being said... if there weren't a part of her that wants to make sure she's doing the right thing and being absolutely fair, she wouldn't have let Discord talk, which gave him the opportunity he needed to get away.
And Fluttershy totally has an earful for Twilight in the next chapter. She's not going to get away with disregarding Fluttershy's opinion, believe me. :-)
Mexicavallo is such a good ponification of Mexico.
I love your work. Your portrayal of Discord retains the funny zaniness while making the character much more complex. Good stuff!
gotta love logic
Edit: Especially when discord is the one using it
When you said Flutters would chew Twilight's ear off, you weren't kidding.
.
Can't wait to see what will happen. Will she get reformed when in the heat of the struggle in the first chapter she actually casts the reforming spell and Discord reflects it unto her? Will it happen the moment they freed him from stone the first time?
Gah the suspense is killing me. But i wouldn't have it any other way.
Keep up these incredible stories,
Well written, believable character interactions, nopony out of character... have my upvote and a fave.
Hope that this updates soon this year.
Good story, but it needs to update.
When I read Fluttershy yelling at her friends... I was reminded of myself... back in early high school and earlier, whenever I was really upset, I would lash out at anyone who came near... Even now if I become upset enough I will just stop holding back and let everyone know just how much of an idiot they appear to me, none of the niceties that society requires...
Please keep it up.
Jeez, Alera. How many stories of yours do I need to favorite?
Looking forward to more of this :D
This is very interesting. Will there be another chapter?
EDIT: I saw that there hasn't been a chapter since January 2014. I'm going to assume it's dead, but I will be tracking this just in case
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Nothing's dead. I just have a lot of stories I'm writing and this one is lower priority than the others.
6382409 ah, thanks for clarifying.
So are we ever getting an update to this, or what?
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Ironically, I was supposed to be working on it today, but I was too tired.
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Ah. Well, here's hoping for an update soon. This has been on the shelf for awhile now. I'm itching to see more.
6790991 really? I thought Discord's response was funnier.
Holy crap YES this is awesome
The element bearers are being really stubborn though? Pony culture, I guess.
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Well, he IS basically pony Satan, sooo...
Oooh this~ Wish the other 4 of the mane six gets to see all this or something....
Naughty naughty twilight.. you deserve EVERYTHING you get coming to you for considering a brainwashing spell owo
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It's not a good troll if you don't have an at least legit-sounding justification for it, as Discord clearly knows.
Praise! Congratulations! Support!
Am I doing it right?
6794983 Well it looks like they could use their ears and have some...sympathy for the devil!
I'll see myself out.
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Actually, that'd be Tirek.
Hooray for updates! I rather like this: pathos, wonderful characterisation… makes you really feel for Discord.
[youtube=91BQqdNOUxs]
Honestly, I'm mildly surprised that, if there are pony countries other than Equestria (Mexicavillo here, Saddle Arabia as mentioned in Magic Duel and later shown again in Equestria Games), why Discord tends to stay around Ponyville and Canterlot (let alone non-pony lands like Yakyakistan). Narrative causality and all that, but the show's really missing out on showing him mucking it up in other places. If he can find a cute little thing like pony Dora though, he should go explore other places.
And at this point, someone, anyone could have reminded her that she's had magical 'oops' before. Even ignoring Lesson Zero, Sonic Rainboom is actually a really good example of how she didn't know how a spell worked - never once did she mention to Rarity that her wings could dissolve in direct sunlight. Or the spell in Swarm of the Century that caused the parasprites to eat all non-edibles.
Your analysis of Discord (through Fluttershy) is rather succinct. I can't recall having seen any other author on this site write him the way you have, as a sapient being with the feral instincts of a merely-sentient animal, especially given that he has close to unlimited power and only a small set of arbitrary morals. The show itself actually does a pretty good job in that regard; it's not even IMPLIED that he killed ponies in the past, so it's quite easy to think he didn't do such a thing, and so probably has a minimal code he follows.
Fluttershy does a really good job of standing up for herself and, more importantly, Discord. She's shown to be capable of it in the show, sometimes even in an underhanded manner, but again so few writers actually write her in such a manner, perhaps out of fear that it would be seen as being out-of-character for her.
The way I'm reading Twilight's thought process here is with some bias on my part, but I think she's really dodging hardcore. Something that's basically advanced brainwashing magic is a whole different ball-game than researching spells to give Rarity wings or Spike a mustache or turning an apple into an orange. I'm not talking complexity here; rather, even ignoring the magical components, I'm talking ethics, precedent and repercussions, things which Twilight has been sorely shown to be lacking in the past. That, and one senses that Twilight knows what she's doing is morally wrong, but doesn't want to risk Celestia being disappointed in her (and Celestia will be, but the reckoning will be displayed).
I've always been iffy with the mention of reforming spells in Keep Calm and Flutter On, and for that matter the Elements of Harmony's laser beam itself. There's potential nightmare fuel in how you interpret the latter, since it's never been outright stated: is it a non-discerning spell that would turn Celestia to stone as easily as it did Discord? Is it reliant upon the perception of its bearers? Potential fanfic fuel in itself there.
Well now. I admit I can't really see where this is going to end up in Twilight's first-person-view psychopomp-esque trip to a timeline that never was, though I'm curious if the person who's life she is adapting is someone that has been named in series canon in one of the comic books or something. The best guess I can make is that Sombra is the result of a reformation spell, twisted for reasons as I mentioned in my comment for the prior chapter on account of perception.
Discord in this chapter reads to me as struggling to be friends, but his problem is his views of friendship are rather twisted, like his idea to block mail to Celestia because he expects Twilight would get in trouble with Celestia over what she intended to do. He's probably right on that regard, but the intent to keep Twilight out of trouble (which he hardly gives the impression of) won't stand up against the consequences she may have set off.
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His actual reason here is that he doesn't want Celestia interfering. He's right that blocking Celestia from getting the mail will keep Twilight from getting in trouble while she is still "reading" the book and can't defend her position, and you're correct that in the long run it probably won't protect Twilight from Celestia being upset with her... but that's just the excuse he's using.
Keep in mind, Discord's motives are primarily self protection, secondarily keeping his friends. He did this in the first place because he didn't want things spiraling out of control (out of his control, anyway.) And yes, his views of friendship are messed up. In this particular series, Discord is Q. He's never been friends with mortals before at this point in his life, and he's at the nadir of his relationship with the Q Continuum, and has rarely had good relations with them anyway... and their entire society is poisonous by pony standards. So yes, he doesn't know what he's doing, not as far as making and keeping friends is concerned anyway.
Oh, and:
Yes. Not that we would have seen these events, because the person in question has very little canon regarding their past, but yes, the person being adapted is a series canon MLP character.
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I might be wrong but I thought it was obvious that it's Discord.
The way I've always thought of discord is even if he's not evil or bad any more he's still a spirate of chaos it's in his nature to cause problems it's basically his job so expecting him not to cause some chaos would Be like expecting applejack to not buck apples or rainbowdash to not fly
This story is amazing
When are you gong to upload a new chapter??
Twilight, I don't think you ponies have had quite enough ruthless dictators to know the dark turns "reform" can take.
Whee! Some fixes:
Owlowiscious
rein; (how could one turn down the horse metaphor?)
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Nope, just one who removed all her significant foes from the planet for a thousand years, including her sister…and then removed [most] mention of her, too.
I want there to be more of this story, so badly.
Oh man, I reeeeeally want to know what happens next! So exciting!
Glad I finally got this one under my belt, given how many other stories allude to it. On to the watch list with it.
Can't wait to see how you conclude this.
I can't wait to see this update!
So far I have to side with Discord on this. Anything that fundamentally alters the mind is essentially death for that person. While that person may still be alive they can never be who or what they were before. And by the descriptions Dizzy keeps giving it sounds like it would be a sever process, akin to a complete destruction and rebuilding of his psyche.
Never really liked the idea of a reforming spell in that episode and I don't think a lot of people like it either. Though I like to think it wouldn't have affected Discord and he just ate the pages to mess with Twilight.
And I also like at the Discord was able to break the teleport shield. Shows Discord still more powerful than Twilight which makes sense since Celestia and Luna needs the elements to stop him.
It's Not usually a good thing when the hero actually enjoys scaring people. Hopefully Twilight doesn't make a horrible decision.
I think you accidentally a word.
Why didn’t you finish this? How can I read the whole “Next of Kin to Chaos” series if this isn’t complete? Why would you create two additional stories without finishing this one first? Please finish this.
Thank you.
And I just discovered that you never finished the last story in the series either.
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Yeah he has a ton of unfinished stories, get used to it. He's trying.
Hot damn that’s the good stuff. It’s rare for me to find a series that scratches my itch for darkness without upsetting me in some other way. Vaguely hope you finish this but muses are illusive and mean so you do you.