Bonus Chapter
Luna glided down towards Discord’s house as the eastern sky reddened. How in the heavens did Celestia even convince her to talk to Discord? Sure, that little filly deserved help with her nightmares, but Luna was certain she could just speak to her in dreams and…
With a start Luna noticed something, or the lack of something. There was light in the windows, but there was no chaos. No trees singing, no flowers dancing, no toy cavalry charge against the mailbox. The garden was more normal than she had ever seen it.
Something was very amiss. Discord didn’t need much concentration to keep his garden chaotic; he could literally do it in his sleep, as Luna had presenced before. Silently, she looked through a front window.
Even the interior of Discord’s house was less chaotic than usual. The oddly calming stream going through the side windows was there, but nothing else was moving, and few things were out of place.
Something colorful caught Luna’s eye; two identical comic books on top of a worktable. They were also the same as the one in the filly’s dream. Why does Discord even…
A flash of light behind her caught Luna by surprise. “Ahem. So our little despotic all-powerful ruler now resorts to creeping around to win our little duel?”
“Nothing like that. I need to talk with you a bit.”
Discord raised an eyebrow. “To gloat, pechance.”
Irritation was creeping on Luna’s voice. “We do not gloat!”
With a flash of light, a small note appeared, and Luna found herself staring at a rendition of herself blowing a raspberry.
“Fine, we do gloat on occasion, but not this time. I came to talk about a filly’s nightmare -”
“So you now accuse me of giving nightmare to fillies. At this rate you will be blaming me for every little thing that goes wrong -”
Luna’s eyebrows furrowed in anger, her glare intense. “CEASE THY PRATTLING AT ONCE!”
Discord gave a mock bow, his voice dripping sarcasm. “As you wish, your highness.”
Celestia’s Sun, give us patience. “A little filly is having nightmares about you every night.”
“And?”
With a scowl, Luna ignored the interruption. “She dreams that she gives you a comic book; it makes you angry, and you go away leaving her behind. It drives her to tears every time. For a whole week she has woken crying.”
“And that filly would be?” There was no more sarcasm on his voice.
Caught by surprise by Discord’s non confrontational tone, Luna looked down. “I don’t know her name. She is a blue pegasus, green mane, without a cutie mark.”
“Misty Blossom.” There was something unexpected on Discord’s voice. Kindness? It was over too fast for Luna to be certain. She looked back at his eyes. “If you want to help her, better get inside. I propose a truce.”
“Agreed,” said Luna as she followed Discord towards the house. She stopped at the open door. “Discord…”
“What? ...Oh, of course.” He snapped his fingers, making about a dozen pies floating behind the doorway disappear. “I’m awfully distracted right now.” he snapped his fingers a couple more times, flashes of light coming from random places in the house. “Every trick and trap is gone for the time being. And don’t you dare cast that nasty anti-chaos spell inside my own house!”
Luna eyed the comics on the table with curiosity. “Did she really give…”
“Yes. This one …“ Discord pointed to the left one, worn but still in good condition “… she gave to me. It’s what gave me the idea of making enchanted comics in the first place. That one …“ he pointed to the right one, identical but in mint condition “... I want to give her as a reward. I only got both authors to autograph it today - “ Discord glanced at the increasingly brighter window “ - I mean, yesterday.”
“So, why didn’t you deliver it yet?”
“It’s that spell I copied from you.” Luna lifted an eyebrow. Discord continued talking, pacing around. “You know what I’m talking about. The dream spell in the enchanted comics. Every time somepony leaves the story, the spell destroy the comic. I can’t give that filly a reward that will be destroyed the first time she uses it.”
“It’s the failsafe.” Said Luna in a deadpan voice.
“What?”
“Out of control dream magic is too dangerous, both for the caster and for the target. Before you even came to Equestria I revised every dream spell to contain a failsafe, to destroy itself instead of just failing. It’s what happens with the comics when the pony leaves the story.”
Discord lifted his front paws in frustration. “Great, just great. Now I find about it, after wasting a whole night while … the filly I want to reward has a nightmare!”
Luna looked from Discord to the new comic. She wasn’t sure if Discord liked the filly or not, but if he did it was clear that he had trouble demonstrating it. When she finally spoke, she didn’t bother to hide the kindness in her voice. “If you want, I will deliver your gift to her. I can also throw a little spell that will give her good dreams for many years whenever the comic guards her sleep.” She shot a sheepish glance at Discord. “And no, it won’t destroy the comic in the end.”
“Would you do that for… her?” There, the same unexpected emotion on Discord’s voice, again only for a split second. “Of course you would; she is one of your precious little ponies. Here,” a greeting card with Discord on the front appeared in a flash, “take this with the comic.”
Luna finished lowering the moon and went to her workshop. She wanted the spell on the comic to be perfect.
She thought about Discord, and on a whim tweaked the spell so the dreams would include him as a hero besides Mistress Mare-velous. A kind and warm smile spread through Luna’s face; dreaming of Discord would make the filly happy, and if what Luna had perceived was really kindness then Discord also deserved this chance.
Luna took the finished comic and Discord’s card, going to her balcony; she knew the filly would already be awake. The Discord that Luna saw today was one that, going against her expectations, seemed capable of caring, perhaps even of loving; he deserved this little favor, and Luna would have done it for the little filly anyway. Spreading her wings, Luna’s smile turned mischievous; regardless of that, she would still make Discord regret the day he entered a prank war against her!
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I really liked the bonus chapter.
3915189
Glad you liked it
3935131
Thanks, I hope it was the good kind of random
3949658 ...I'm sorry, I don't really understand what you said in the second paragraph. My mind's a little ERROR 404 BRAIN NOT FOUND today.
3950223
I was a bit confusing and my sarcasm detector is busted, so...
Keep in your mind the idea that Discord created the comics and can watch inside them at will. Then read the synopsis of this fic.
When it happened to me, I needed quite a bit of time to stop laughing
3950271 Okay yeah, that IS funny. Especially when Discord lends himself SO nicely to those "NOW KISS" memes.
No offense intended, but is English your native tongue? More than once, you used "she" instead of "her", a common mistake made by those for whom English is a secondary language. You otherwise seem to be doing a fair job with it, so kudos on learning English if I'm correct in my assessment!
If I'm wrong, then this is extremely embarrassing and I apologize for my error
4032940
Yep, you are right; my native tongue is Brazilian Portuguese. With one additional caveat: my English is mostly self-taught from reading books (novels and RPG manuals mostly), with very few formal lessons, few conversations, and almost all of my previous writings in English consisting of forum posts. As far as I can tell, my accent is atrocious
I've been at it since I was a child and, if one considers just reading skill, I'm roughly as proficient in English as in my native tongue.)
(It was an awfully large number of books, though, counted in the high hundreds nowadays.
So, thanks for the tip, I really need those to improve
(Would you mind pointing a couple places where I've used the wrong word? It would help me lock into the pattern I'm getting wrong, so I can correct it here and try to avoid making the same errors afterward.)
4033239
Sure thing! I'll just highlight the incorrect word in each passage
In the epilogue:
Towards the end of the bonus chapter:
Well, since you put this up looking for advice, I'll leave a little.
If you've just started writing, you're off to a good start, but you've got your work cut out for you. This story suffers from fast pacing and telling, that throw off the flow of the narrative. You voiced Discord well, but the other characters could use some work. But I say you've started at a good place, because these problems will only lessen with practice, as you grow more comfortable with writing, for the show in particular. Best of luck. :)
4034452
Thanks!
Fixed the two you pointed, and now that I know what to look for, I will take a look at the rest of the fic (and my other fics) for similar issues when I get some free time.
4034785
Thanks for your comment and hints!
The excessive telling in the epilogue was partially intentional, though I agree that I didn't pull it off well and that I should have mixed more showing in my intentionally telly parts. When narrating the conversation with Derpy I wanted to give the impression that Discord wasn't paying attention, and for the following part, I didn't want to repeat Power Ponies inside my fic, but I needed to show some key parts.
For the rest of the fic I don't have any excuse, though
I believe part of my issue with fast pacing is due to my writing being somewhat close to brown prose. I need to get more practice in adding meaningful details. Well, this and the fact this fic had a limit of 7K words, though I could have slowed it a fair bit with a thousand additional words and still remained below the size limit.
(This one is my third fiction piece that wasn't a school assignment, BTW, and the last one of those I did was back in High School. A lot to learn yet
)
I'll have the reviews up of all the Luna stories up on my blog tomorrow, but I wanted to come over here and make a few observations about this story--some of the things I liked and some of the things I might have done differently, which didn't really fit into the context of a reader-oriented review.
First off, characterization: you did some nice things with Discord, especially in the early going, but I found him less and less interesting as the fic progressed. A lot of that had to with the fact that, in the early going, Discord (and his powers) were much more active, and less plot-oriented, than in the later going. As a being of chaos, keeping a fair bit of maniac-ness about him (the opening with the flamingo, yoyo tree, etc. was a great example) is really necessary. Later, he becomes a much more static force (even when the anti-chaos fields aren't holding him back), which is unfortunate.
The princesses I was less impressed with. They seem to mostly be story-advancing vehicles, and their role in the story is entirely reactionary--even the anti-chaos stuff seems to come into play mostly so that Discord can gripe about it, rather than as part of a cohesive characterization of either princess.
Now, the concept here was great, insofar as the interactive comics stuff went... but there was a serious lack of focus. Looking just at the story proper (the bonus chapter doesn't really count, when we're talking about "focus"), we spend more than half the fic setting up the concept, then go on to the prank revelation (aside: ew. Funny, but eeewwww), before moving on to a retelling of canon events from a different perspective, then ends on a note not obviously related to any of the above with Derpy and Dinky and learning to be a good pony/draconequus. There events hold together fine, but I had trouble finding a coherent theme to the whole thing; it felt less like a single story than a series of anecdotes connected only in the sense that they involved the same characters and timeline. Now again, the idea here was good--I just think more could've been done to turn that idea into a cohesive narrative.
As far as language, I can see a few other commenters have already mentioned it, so I won't belabor the point. As Oats noted, you make a lot of typical non-native speaker mistakes (e.g. using "which" to describe intelligent creatures (use "who" instead), trouble with conditionals ("If it was any of the others Discord wouldn't mind" should be "If it were any of the others, Discord wouldn't have minded")), but honestly? Your editing is still better than at least half the stories that get posted here every day, so don't get down about that.
Heck, don't get down about anything. There's plenty of room for growth here, but you've got a good feel for how to write humor suited to your medium, you have a good sense for what ideas will and won't work in a story, and despite what issues I did take, I still enjoyed this; it was definitely a worthy addition to the contest.
I hope that helps you going forward with your writing. Keep at it!
4044143
).
Thanks! I will try to keep what you said in mind for my future stories. I just wish I had gotten comments like this back when I first posted this story, it has taken nine stories (eight posted here) for the first actually critical comment (apart from pointing grammatical errors) to appear, and your own came only after I had written ten stories (but then, I'm taking part in every EQD Writers Training Ground since #003, so I post at least one story per week
Incidentally:
- The prank was intentionally left vague because I was certain the readers would imagine something far worse than I could ever write. Heck, from your reaction I would bet you imagined something far worse than what I myself had in mind
(For reference, my own mental image is something steamy, not cloppy, but with the volunteer being Luna's own maid. I guess in hindsight it would have been more fun to make the who explicit while still leaving the what vague, it would reinforce why Luna is so disturbed at the sight.)
- The story behind the plot was supposed to show how Discord needs interaction with other ponies, both friendly and competitive, to be happy. He is supposed to be ultimately happy about being in a prank war with Luna, even - to his surprise - when he is losing, despite becoming frustrated from time to time, though I don't think I was able to convey this. I completely agree that I lost focus.
- The extra chapter was originally the ending, but I couldn't find a way to have both it, and Luna's most recent answer to Discord's prank, in a coherent way. I believe it ties better into what I wanted to show than the current ending.