No Exit
I'm not safe.
I mean I'm not safe for others to deal with, not that I'm personally in danger. Although I suppose perhaps I am. It's hard to feel threatened when the danger is yourself; it's much easier for me to recognize the danger to others, mainly because whatever I do, I know I'll think it's a good idea at the time. Which is the problem, you see.
I'm going to do it again. Sooner or later. I don't want to, I'd do anything to prevent it, but I can't figure out how. Because I never saw it coming that I was going to do it the first time, before I did it, and then it seemed like a good idea so I did it, because that's what I do. I'm Chaos. I'm inconsistent. It's not at all difficult to convince me to change my mind, but it's impossible to get my mind to stay changed, because I am change. The only thing constant about me is my inconstancy.
I used to think that was a good thing.
Something else that's changed, I suppose.
I have poor impulse control. I'm self-centered. Narcissistic. Poor attention to detail. Short attention span. I go with my gut, pretty much all the time. And I'm much moodier than I look. I try to never let anypony know that they got to me, so I'm laughing all the time, but inside my feelings are frequently... well, chaotic. I know, I know, shocking.
I'm smart enough that I know all these things about myself. (Full disclosure: I am also creative, intelligent, and funny. I have good qualities. Just... none of them matter. My good qualities are all tools, like my magic, that I could use to do wonderful things if I felt like it, except I usually don't feel like it, because of my bad qualities. Which, I suppose, makes me fundamentally... bad. Which would be all right, except I don't want to be anymore. But I don't know how to stop myself.)
I mean, common sense and basic logic should have said Tirek was manipulating me. Of course I don't have any common sense and logic and I have been arguing on and off for centuries, but my own experience should have told me better, because it's my own trick! I'd have done exactly what Tirek did, if I was relatively weak and trying to recharge my powers and someone vastly more powerful than me turned up to take me captive and they had as blatantly obvious a weakness as the fact that they'd just switched sides. How did I not know this? How wasn't it instantly obvious to me that it was a scam?
But he called me powerful. Legendary. Fluttershy calls me sweet. Which feels nice at times, but diminishing. I wanted to be intimidating when I went to face Tirek in the first place, and what he was saying made me feel like he'd have no respect for me if I was on the ponies' side, and the thought of being seen as a weak sap by someone so infamous himself hurt my pride. I mean, who am I? Fluttershy's goofy friend who is roundly disliked by almost all of her other friends, almost all of the time? Or Discord, Master of Chaos, the terror of ponykind? I could be Fluttershy's friend and have her love, but nopony else's and no respect either. Or I could be Tirek's friend and ally, have his friendship, which is considerably less sappy and sweet than Fluttershy's but made me feel strong, and have the respect and fear of all ponykind.
It was the wrong decision. It makes me sick to remember it. But I know why I did it. I know what the feelings he played on were, I know exactly how he manipulated me. And I don't know how to guarantee that it won't happen again, because I don't think much about yesterday or tomorrow. I live in the moment and I do what my whims tell me to do. Because I'm Chaos, and that's how it is.
I was in my element when I was hated. I knew exactly what I was doing, I was on top of my game. I was an expert at being hated and at making ponies frightened or miserable, I was good at it and I enjoyed it. They respected and feared me, they did what I told them to do, and nopony ever tried to stop me. Well, except for Celestia and Luna... who I betrayed. I spent centuries thinking to myself they were the ones who betrayed me, they were the ones who turned on me, but no, that was never right, was it? I could have had Celestia's forgiveness if I'd ever admitted I was wrong... but I liked being evil. Because being good hurts.
Because no matter how much I ever tried to make friends, no matter how much I ever tried to fit in with the ponies, it wasn't possible. I'm not like them. I'm less like them than the majority of the other beings on this planet. They don't understand how beautiful Chaos is, and they want to shackle themselves to routines and traditions and all that stupid stuff, and I don't get them and they don't get me and they would never be my friends. I'll give Tia credit, she tried to get me to make friends, but I knew it wasn't going to happen so I wasn't having any. She and Luna were like family to me, and I always felt that was all I needed, because even if family doesn't understand you and you don't fit in, they still love you.
Turns out I was wrong about that.
Ponies don't like me. They don't want to be my friend. They're afraid of me, or annoyed by me. And when I want to be their friend, when I want to be good and to have a place in their society, that hurts. Whereas when I want to terrify them and make them obey me and entertain me with their suffering, well, then that works great! I can have exactly the kind of relationship with ponies I want, as long as what I want is a relationship where I make them cry or grovel to me.
Fluttershy told me I could have real friends. Sometimes I hate her because it's not true. But I love her because it's true for her. I can have one real friend. The others still can't stand me. Well, mostly. I have no idea about Twilight, she'll go to the ends of Equestria for me and she'll spend a week researching how exactly did I manage to get myself sick and she'll declare me to be her friend even though I betrayed her... but she never wanted to be around me. That's changed now, but I don't think it's changed for the right reasons. I think she still can't stand me but she tries to keep me close because she's afraid of what I'll do if I go off by myself, and it hurts and it makes me angry but the thing that hurts the worst is that I can't blame her. Who would trust me? Who would want to be my friend?
Fluttershy's an idiot. She never saw it coming that I would betray her. She believed in me. Who could possibly be stupid enough to believe in me? Why would she ever...
I don't deserve a friend like her.
I wish I could be worthy of her. I wish I could be what she thinks I am, what she wants me to be. But I'm not. And I don't see any way to make myself be. And that's the problem.
Ponies will never like me and want to be my friend, in general, because I am unlikeable and untrustworthy. And this will always make part of me wish to be evil again. Because when I was working with Tirek, up to the point where I first got a faint inkling that he was using me, I loved every minute of it. I was in my element again, finally. Ponies weren't running in fear from me because I asked them the price of the pear sandwiches, they were running in fear from me because I was trying to catch them and hand them over to my ally to be drained of their magic. They were supposed to fear me.
It felt good. It felt right. It felt like this was always who I was supposed to be.
I'm terrified that it is who I'm supposed to be. And the fact that I don't want it doesn't change the fact that that's who I am, and who I'll always be. And every time I'm offered the temptation to turn evil again, strongly enough... I don't know how I won't fall.
Because the fact that I despise myself now and I think I'm horrible and I wish I was dead won't change the fact that at some point, that will change and I'll resent having friends and caring about ponies, because when I'm evil I don't have a conscience and therefore my conscience can't hurt me, and when I'm evil I don't have friends and therefore I don't miss having friends or wish I had some, and it's empty and it's hollow and there's no real joy in it but there's no pain either. It feels good the way scarfing down twenty-seven cupcakes or having a foursome with three hot ponies whose names you don't know feels good. It satisfies your needs right now, and if it can't satisfy anything deeper or more meaningful, well who needed deep meaning anyway? Live in the now, and you'll never have to care that your life is totally meaningless! Besides, why does Chaos incarnate want meaning in his life anyway?
I don't want to go back there but when I was offered a chance to go back there I took it without even thinking about it much because I do want to go back there, and I hate myself for wanting it but I know that if I did go back all the way, if I hardened myself the way I did when Celestia and Luna were fighting me and I made myself stop caring, then I wouldn't hate myself anymore and it wouldn't hurt, and I hate myself even more knowing that. I want friendship but I don't deserve it and if I didn't want it it wouldn't hurt that I don't deserve it. Right now it hurts when they hate me because I want them to like me, and it hurts when they like me because I know I'm not worthy of that.
I'm going to fall again. I don't want to. The me that I am now hates that guy, and hates myself because I know that someday I'll be that guy again and the me that I am now doesn't know how to stop it, because the me that I am now is totally and completely miserable and the evil guy won't be, and I'll break under the pain. I know I will.
So I've been thinking about how to protect my friends, and the world, from what will happen when I fall again. Because it's inevitable. Because I'm horrible and it will always hurt less to embrace being horrible and revel in it than it is to feel guilt and self-doubt and self-hatred over it.
I can't give up my powers. They have to go to someone, just like the alicorns' powers did. Mine don't work quite like theirs; theoretically I could disperse my power, just drain it into the world, but the world absorbing that much Chaos energy would probably have worse effects in the long run than anything I might consciously decide to do. So getting rid of the power either screws over the whole planet, or transfers them to someone else who has much less experience with controlling them than I do, and they're as likely to corrupt anyone I transferred them to as they were to corrupt me. I wasn't always evil. I remember that.
I can't kill myself either, for the same reason. Chaos will simply choose a new avatar and dump the power on them. Fluttershy and Twilight and Celestia will have to deal with someone they don't know, someone who possibly started out a lot more evil than I started out, or who thinks death and killing is funny, or at the very least who was never their friend and never had anything deep down inside that wanted to be. It'd solve the problem of my suffering, but so would turning evil. I'm trying to come up with a way to save the ponies who actually call me a friend, not hurt them.
I can't split off my dark side so I can be good. That trick never works. It'd inevitably result in me, or my friends, fighting my evil avatar, who'd be more ruthless and more chaotic and therefore more powerful, so we'd lose. Besides, if I got rid of the parts of me that make me likely to turn evil again, what's left of me? Chaos isn't inherently either good or evil, but the fact that the ponies don't understand it and don't like it isolates me from them, which hurts, which makes me want to turn off my conscience so I can just do whatever I want without hurting. I can't take my chaos out of me and have anything at all left.
I once tried discording myself. I turned into a kind of pathetic, emotionally needy wretch who'd do anything at all to be loved or at least liked. Quite aside from the fact that I despise that guy even more than I despise Evil Me, that isn't likely to make me less vulnerable to being emotionally manipulated into doing the wrong thing. I mean... part of the reason I worked with Tirek was... I'm embarrassed to say this even to myself but... I thought we were friends. I thought he liked me. I wasn't ever going to say so in so many words (although I think maybe at the end when he drained me, and I was so shocked at his betrayal that I couldn't even think to teleport or run until it was too late, I might actually have said so in so many words), but... yeah. I thought I'd found a friend who'd appreciate me for myself, who wouldn't try to restrain my chaos but who reveled in it as much as I did.
Yes. I should have known better. I'm stupid, all right? I mean I am very, very intelligent, but sometimes I'm incredibly stupid.
So what am I supposed to do? I can't die, I can't get rid of my powers, I can't make myself less likely to turn evil again. I try to enjoy Fluttershy's friendship but I know that even though she says she's forgiven me, I hurt her badly and I don't think I can ever really make it right. And I don't feel like I should even hope to make it right because she shouldn't trust me or even like me, and I'm just being selfish in wanting her to be my friend because I don't deserve friends. Twilight's always in my face, asking me about abstruse points of magical theory, making me help her translate ancient tomes or getting me to give her hints about some fine point of magic, and I admit I enjoy that. When we're talking about magic, it's abstract enough that for a little while I can forget my guilt and shame. But she never did it before. She says she's doing it because I was helpful in the whole thing with the keys to the box but I don't believe her. I think she's doing it to keep me close by and keep me emotionally invested in the ponies so I don't fall again. And I can't blame her, it's the smart thing to do and I don't deserve anything better, but it hurts to think she's just acting like a friend to make me stay good and she doesn't really care.
I've tried a few times to just leave. Disappear into the Everfree or some other wild, distant place. I went to the moon for a little while because without the Elements, not even Luna can get there. But it turns out that Luna may not be able to get there, but she can send communication. She located me and started dumping "Please come home” letters from Fluttershy all over me until I couldn't take the guilt trip anymore and came home. They won't let me go off by myself for any significant length of time. They tell me it's because they're worried about me but they were never worried about me before. It's the same thing. They're afraid I'm going to fall again. I don't even know why that hurts, I'm afraid of the same thing.
It hurts that they don't trust me. But that's stupid. I don't trust me. I wouldn't have any respect for their intelligence if they did trust me. So why does it hurt?
I even tried convincing the Tree to put me back in stone. Spent half an hour arguing with the damned thing. I realize it probably would have looked ridiculous, a fully grown draconequus arguing with a crystalline tree that doesn't talk, but I've never been ashamed of looking ridiculous. Not only did it refuse to do it, it summoned Fluttershy and Pinkie Pie. It doesn't talk, even to them, so when they showed up they had no idea I'd just spent half an hour trying to commit suicide by tree; Fluttershy just had this feeling that a friend who needed help was by the Tree, and Pinkie had her Pinkie Sense thing telling her something similar. I didn't tell them what I was doing there, and I pretended nothing was wrong, and they didn't believe me but they didn't press it too hard, since I think they're well aware that absolutely nothing they say will get me to tell them the truth if I don't want to.
They took me out to dinner and fed me tea and cupcakes.
I was going to have cucumber sandwiches and then I remembered bringing the cucumber sandwiches just before I captured all of them for Tirek and I lost my appetite completely. I ate a couple of cupcakes anyway because when Pinkie demands that you eat cupcakes, it's just easier to do it than to fight with her about it, but I could barely taste them.
I haven't done anything particularly chaotic in a week. Or even used my magic much, aside from being asked to do favors. I feel awful. I feel like there's nothing worthwhile in my existence and if I can't create chaos there's nothing that gives me any joy at all. I'm doing it because I want to feel this way. I don't deserve to be happy. I don't deserve to be entertained. And it makes me feel like, maybe there's some hope for me to not be an evil monster if I can control the desire for chaos. Except I can't, because it's the only thing I like to do, the only thing I want to do, and the desire to do it nags at me constantly, and the only reason I don't do it is, I feel too awful to want to do anything I actually want to do because I shouldn't be happy.
There were some moments, right after the girls saved the day, when I felt like it was all going to be all right. Like they'd forgiven me and well, what's past is past, right? Can't change it, so you might as well move forward! Sure, I got the impression that maybe Fluttershy was just a little bit more reticent around me than I was used to, and Rainbow Dash was scowling at me even more than she used to, but, well, learning experience all around, now let's move on! Let it go already.
But I can't let it go because it's still there. I didn't do it because I was mind controlled. I didn't do it because I made a silly mistake. I did it because it's in my nature, because part of me would rather be feared and hated than have friends because at least then the lack of friends won't hurt, and I don't know how to change my nature so it's not a part of me anymore. So I'm afraid it's going to happen again. And right now, the me that I am now doesn't know how to keep the me that I will be from betraying everypony I care about, again, one of these days, because the me that I will be won't care about the opinion of the me that I am now. Any more than the me that I was when I faced Tirek cared about the opinion of the me that I was when Fluttershy took care of me when I was sick.
I don't know what to do. I'd do anything to protect her from the me that I will be, but nothing I've thought of can possibly work, and most of it will just make matters worse. I'd even give my life, right now, except that that would almost certainly make matters worse.
I don't know what to do.
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OH GOD THE FEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEELS
I wonder how any of the Mane Six would react if ever read/heard this monologue.
You are one of the best writers of Discord that I've ever met. Seriously.
I hate you for making me cry,
. But I love how this really gets into Discord's character 
. Keep up the good work
4369075
I think the next thing to do is to show this from the outside -- how does his behavior look to them? Being that he's Discord he's undoubtedly hiding as much of this as he can, but you can tell they know something is up -- among other things I'm fairly sure that Fluttershy and Pinkie Pie know he had no good, healthy reasons for being over by the Tree by himself. But I don't know if anyone has any idea exactly what's going on, and in fact they may be misinterpreting the lack of chaos as a *good* sign.
4369096 Ah, I see...
Problem is Fluttershy or Pinkie Pie pressing him on the matter would make him worse (no wonder they did not). Asking advice from one of the Princesses (Twilight included) could go bad. That is a interesting situation you got there and very in-character of them, while taking a dark twist on the MLP-verse.
And after reading some of your ST fics, all I have to say is that you're pretty good with characterization while applying your own twist. You could be a writer yourself!
This is very good.
You really get his motivations -- and his limits.
That is a deeply sad paragraph. He is describing, not joy but hedonic addiction. As if his normal state is utter apathy and he has to shock himself into emotion with extreme sensation.
4369494
I am a firm believer that the opposite of love is not hate, but indifference.
In one of my stories here, I explore this theme a bit, but love and hate both require passion to express.
Apathy and indifference just require you passively go along for the ride.
The worst part is, I have actually been inside of that mindset that is found within that bit of quoted text, having reached that point when deep within the throes of heroin addiction.
Real bad place to be mang.
4369494
Epic way to look at it.
Maybe he needs to trade some of his chaos with a being of absolute order, and balance each other out.
4370029
But who?
-Luna has fallen once already, and an infusion of Chaos magic might make her fall again.
-Cadance could become paranoid and hateful if corrupted- after all, hate and love are two sides to the same coin, and both hold immense power, possibly beyond that of friendship. It's a fearsome thought.
-Celestia bears many burdens, and if she were to become corrupted, well, she is a nuke without any safeguards- no switches, levers, or removal parts to ensure that nothing blows up. One bad day + Daymare Sun = nuclear wasteland, aka Ruins of Equestria.
-The Chaos magic could be divided among the Mane Six- their connection to the Elements could potentially lessen the effects, and with six of them they might not be too effected. However, with someone like Twilight carrying that much darkness, even only a fraction of it, could sway the rest of the Mane Six to inflict vast amounts of destruction for their own gains. Not to mention that these are the ponies Discord is trying to protect in the first place.
I dunno how this is going to be solved, but you have my follow.
4369494
This is a thing with a lot of humans who are novelty seekers or thrill seekers. They need the next big thing, the rush of adrenaline, the thing that's new and unexperienced to trigger the endorphin rush. Nothing old excites them, and in the case of the thrill seekers, nothing can excite them unless they're close to the edge of death. They need the new, or they need the thrill, or they need the pain; some kind of extreme sensation in order to feel alive. Those are the people who drive human experience forward, those who make the new discoveries, who explore new lands; they're also the people who succumb to drug addiction, sex addiction, gambling addiction... or who sometimes just get themselves killed doing daredevil stunts.
It was always obvious to me that Q was one of those beings, and if Discord isn't Q, he's probably moreso like this, because it's his entire raison d'etre. Discord is change, it's his purpose in existence, he lives for novelty and remix and break all the old rules and make something different. He always seems quite manic, except for the moments of sadness, like at the end of Keep Calm and a good portion of the ending sequence of Twilight's Kingdom. He needs constant change and excitement and attention and things that are different because everything else bores him.
So yes, I can totally see Discord being an addict. More like food addiction or sex addiction than drug addiction, because he's addicted to something he literally cannot go without, meaning cold turkey is not a safe option. He does, in fact, need his chaos. He can't be happy without any chaos, it's his nature. But too much chaos is a drug to cover up the fact that he feels that his life is meaningless (and he's a sentient being; as much as he loves chaos, part of him wants his life to have meaning) and that there's no joy in it. His friendship with Fluttershy was probably the first thing in millennia that made him feel happy enough to be able to slow down and be calm even for a little while.
The thing he's going through now is anhedonia, the inability to feel or explicit desire to not feel pleasure, the self-loathing he feels manifesting in part in an attempt to control his chaos that his friends probably think is a good sign that he's maturing and getting his chaos addiction under control... but it's totally not. He's doing entirely the wrong thing here -- he knows it's his own misery that's going to make him snap, but he hasn't taken it the next step and realized that he needs to take care of himself and his own mental health. The self-hatred he feels over how easy it was for him to decide to betray his friends and how little control he feels he has over his own future actions and how likely he feels it is that he'll do it again, all that's going to do is make him less able to resist temptation the next time it comes along. He can't cure himself by punishing himself; he needs happiness if he's going to resist, but he can't imagine where he could get it, and he's too proud and too unused to having friends to ask for help.
A post finale fic! Finale!
*cough* *cough* Sorry for the pun.
Damn, that fic is depressing, and like most sad stories, you made us feel empty afterwards.
Urg. THANKS!
Anyone noticed that in the finale, the beam of Discords magic is some sort of cosmos stream of power (reality warping magic omg), but Tirek only grew a few centimeters from it, and apart from that, he didn't seem to have changed in the slightest?
Hum-pf. Under-powered Discord, much?
Fluttershy already forgave him, but he hasn't forgiven himself. That feeling of not deserving anything... it makes sense, but its stopping him from escaping the cycle.
He'll have to demand to be given a real chance by the ponies, to have any hope of them to stop fearing and disliking him - to escape the status quo. Can't do that if he feels he doesn't deserve to make demands.
Rarity would be a good start, with her generosity.
4370926
It makes perfect sense with my headcanon.
Raw magic is Chaos. Discord can manipulate magic in its raw, unfiltered form. He has an enormous amount of magic and he can make full use of it, because he doesn't need to filter it down with control structures. Unicorn magic is harmonic -- chaos controlled, working in partnership with the mind of the unicorn using the magic -- so it is weaker than chaos magic, but easier to control. Tirek is an Evil Overlord type -- he seeks total control, absolute mastery. Harnessing magic that tightly, controlling it so much, weakens it drastically. Tirek's orientation is Order, not Harmony, and Order is opposed to Magic entirely. So when Tirek consumes harmonic magic, it is weaker than it would be if the unicorn who owned it had it, because Tirek masters magic, he doesn't partner with it. And when Tirek consumes chaos magic, his need to control it completely filters it down so far, it's hardly more than he'd get from a few powerful unicorns.
Actual unicorns (or alicorns) who turn into Evil Overlord types don't lose magical power; even though their psychological orientation is toward Order, they learned their magic when they were Harmonic. But Tirek has very little magic of his own, only the magic of being able to steal the magic of others. So his control over his magic is based on his mindset as an adult Evil Overlord. Thus he doesn't get much from stealing power from Discord, because attempting to "order" chaos magic doesn't get you very far.
ooooh :D that should be a letter that fluttershy reads in the next chapter O_O
aaaand :D i want to ask when the next chapter of elements of opposition will be out ;)
and when the next love, friendship and chaos will be there :DDD
that are my favorite storys
you make a good point. None of his friends liked him (except flutter) and he was routinely disliked and not trusted. No wonder he turned evil again..it's his nature for chaos to be expressed. It's like telling cady not to be full of love, or applejack dishonest. It's not him..
4372207
Nice headcannon. Okay
smile/
I'm not so sure about that, Discord. It worked out for Kami in the long run, and his "evil" avatar ended up turning to good as well.
4391587
He's got a point, though, that he doesn't really have a good and evil side per se; he loves chaos, and ponies don't. To remove the temptation to do "evil", he'd have to remove the temptation to do chaos, and without his chaos, what's he got left?
What he really needs is stronger emotional bonds, but hating himself and thinking he's unworthy of friendship is totally not the way to go about getting them.
The problem with omnipotence is that there's no challenge in anything. When every problem is a literal snap, boredom is quick to follow. And when one can do anything, one will be willing to do everything just so something interesting can happen.
And then one day, there's a problem that isn't so easily solved. When all one has is the ultimate hammer, it's a dirty window. And then the omnipotent finds himself impotent, for he has long forgotten how to solve problems any other way.
A fantastic analysis of Discord's motivations and his thoughts about them. Eagerly looking forward to more. I just hope he tells someone how he feels. This is a job for communication, for understanding, for friends, but Discord clearly doesn't recognize that. I just hope he stumbles on the answer.
wow.
this here is a stellar look inside of discord's head. masterfully done dear author
and going by your little author box i mest say i am very happy to not be the only person round theses parts who is, compared to the larger number here, old enough to have parented most of them.
Im sure that you mentioned this before, but how will the mane 6 find this letter? I think you already commented on this question but I cant find the answer
4639378
Because Pinkie actually thought "3,001 Jokes In Ancient Griffonian" sounded like a good thing to read... and because she was using Discord as a pillow and went through his stuff while he was asleep. (This isn't a DiscoPie ship, Pinkie is just really really really affectionate with friends who she senses are having serious emotional problems and need hugs. She doesn't really know what's wrong with Discord before she reads his journal, but she knows something's wrong. She wasn't going through his stuff to spy on him; it was late, she was bored, he was asleep, she didn't want to wake him up by leaving the room to go find a book even though there are a bazillion books in the castle, and he doesn't have a lot of stuff, so she went through it figuring Discord must have something vaguely entertaining in his possession, given how few possessions he bothers to keep.)
But I think that before we go into what happens after that, I'm going to backtrack and describe what's been happening, because Discord is an unreliable narrator.
4640106
So is the joke book really Discord's journal/diary or did he just stick his monologue somewhere in the book.
If the joke book really is a cover for his journal, then why the hell did he choose 3,001 Jokes In Ancient Griffonian
I want to know, how much of this is true, and how much of it is Discord exaggerating or misunderstanding?
4722024
Pretty much everything he thinks about what's going on with the Mane 6 is either entirely wrong or only partially right. His thoughts about what he can safely do with his powers are correct.
4722071 What exactly is his situation like in Equestria as of now, like what is the public opinion of him or is there any who think he should be killed.
You could write a story on that, where he is killed somehow, and the fallout resulting from it.
4725486
Seems unlikely. From a meta perspective, I don't wanna kill Discord; I killed Q once and didn't write anything else for the next six months. From an in-story perspective, Discord is damn near impossible to kill when he has his powers, and I think very few ponies would be obsessed enough with revenge for a few days without their power to go hunt down one of the very few kinds of weapons that would work against Discord. So I think it's very unlikely that he would be killed.
That being said, a murder *attempt* might be interesting... particularly if it actually comes close to succeeding. His powers are greatly weakened inside the palace; someone who sees him in the palace and becomes overwhelmed with rage could actually hurt him, though they couldn't kill him, most likely.
There are in fact ponies who want revenge on Discord, but they know better than to think they can hunt him down and kill him; mostly they're agitating to have him punished more harshly by Celestia. And kind of pissy that she won't do it.
4727560 You say there's hardly any thing that can kill Discord when he has is powers. So what exactly can work on him. Besides the Elements of Harmony, you mentioned in Elements of Opposition a magic sledgehammer that Discord sent to another dimension. What else is there that can effect him.
4731352
Yes. The item that became the Hammer of Celestia in the other universe, which seems to have possibly become Excalibur in this one (Discord says he turned it into a sword and chucked it into a lake, where a naiad took custody of it... sounds like Excalibur :-)), has the ability to sever an immortal's connection to their body, so they do not have the ability to return to it, or to any body. That could have killed Discord (and did, in another universe), which is why he got rid of it.
Any part of the Tree of Harmony is inimical to him (as he is to it; he actually made the plunder vine seeds from his own blood. He wasn't completely joking when he called them his babies.) Making an arrow from the Tree and shooting him in the head or heart with it could theoretically kill him, or at least petrify him. However, it's really hard to shoot Discord with anything because he is amazingly good at dodging (including splitting his body in half, as he did with Tirek.) Poisoning him with an extract of the Tree, ground up, could turn him to stone but Discord is generally in the habit of transforming what he eats, so he'd likely sense the presence of the harmonics in the food.
Parts of Matrisse, the Avatar of Order, can be dangerous or fatal to Discord. Matrisse was a crystalline mountain; Discord smashed it, which rendered it ineffective (he kind of had to, it was trying to rewrite reality so that magic would no longer exist), but breathing the dust from smashing the mountain left him sick and powerless for some time, and the ponies (who had no idea he'd just saved them from a terrible fate, and he certainly wasn't going to tell them) found him and put rings with crystals of Matrisse around his horns. The idea was to bind his magic as one would with a unicorn, but Discord doesn't use his horns for magic; what it did instead was fry his brain, leaving him as if he was on very heavy drugs, until he managed to talk Celestia into removing them. (Watching a very intelligent being who might be your enemy now, but who was once your lover, behaving as if he's just had a stroke because of something you did to him was more than she could handle. She would have preferred killing him to rendering him into a drooling, half-catatonic creature who could barely move or talk.) So binding any part of Matrisse against his body will make that part of his body function very erratically, and poisoning him with part of Matrisse would shut down his powers and make him extremely sick. Stabbing or shooting him with a weapon made from Matrisse might kill him. He might not stay dead, but he'd probably die at least for a while.
Tatzlwurm mucus suppresses magic. We've actually seen that work on Discord. (What we saw was him getting sick, but in Love Friendship and Chaos I'm eventually going to explain *how*, and part of it was that Tatzlwurm goo can suppress magic.) If you suppress Discord's magic, then pretty much anything can kill him because he's rendered mortal. That being said, an ordinary Tatzlwurm is the size of a human hand; it's Discord's fault they were large enough to generate enough goo to affect him.
There are other means, some of which I just haven't bothered to think of, others I can't tell you about because spoilers.
4733260 Wait, if he could come back to life, and is immortal, how did the previous spirits of chaos that you mentioned in Elements of Opposition die? Is there some difference between them and Discord? And that unicorn that was mentioned in the story that tried to summon those elder gods, when and how did that happen.
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Chaos avatars are emotionally unstable. A lot of them took themselves out, either by doing something stupid or because they were actively self destructive. I don't know all of them and I don't know what happened to all of them, but a few of the ones I do know about, I know how they ended.
Set, a creature so transformed by being the chaos avatar that no one knows what his original species was, was tasked with protecting the creature who had Celestia's job -- the being who raised the sun -- from a force of darkness, destruction and entropy called Apep. Set was a jerk who had at one point separated his brother's body into seven pieces (without actually killing him, rather like Discord can detach his own body parts any time he wants to), but he wasn't evil and he took his responsibilities seriously... kind of like Discord himself in that regard. However, eventually he lost his daily fight with Apep, and became consumed, turning into a force of darkness and evil himself. It is unknown whether he was then banished to another dimension or killed.
Ar, a female dragon raised in a deeply patriarchal society (dragons can be either matriarchal or patriarchal), went overboard with her resentment of and anger toward males when she became the chaos avatar, and set about specifically attacking male creatures. As a result, the most misogynist, patriarchal society on the entire planet came into existence and used Ar's existence as an excuse to oppress females even further, declaring that the very act of a female giving orders to a male serves chaos. Ar, who had seriously believed she could use chaos to make a positive change, became deeply depressed and put herself into dragon sleep, which can potentially last millennia, and in this case has. At some point she had slept long enough that someone else just took the avatar role from her. She might actually still be alive, but sleeping; however, she's not the avatar anymore. (Ten points to anyone who knows what I'm ripping off here)
Pan, a goat who'd been turned bipedal by chaos, went worldwalking one day and never came back. No one actually knows what happened to him.
Mayhem, Discord's immediate predecessor, was a draconequus like Discord, who stirred up interracial tensions between ponies for the lulz. This ended up bringing the windigos, who as collateral damage killed off 90% of the draconequus race. Mayhem was killed by the Fires of Friendship in a battle with Queen Imbrium, Celestia and Luna's mother, but it was kind of suicide by pony because he was responsible for the annihilation of his own species and was in despair about it; he was ostensibly trying to kill off all the ponies, but he was doing it in a really stupid way given his capabilities, and was probably either consciously or subconsciously trying to destroy himself. He died when Discord was about 2 and when Luna was maybe a few months old. It's theoretically possible that he could have brought himself back -- the Fires of Friendship dispersed the windigos, but chaos avatars are a bit tougher than windigos -- but he had no desire to.
Brightest Star was a unicorn mage who was taken on by Celestia and Luna as a personal student during Discord's rule, because she was a chaos mage, and they thought she could counter Discord. She was incredibly powerful, on a level with Twilight. Discord saw her as *his* personal student, that his attacks on her, and hers on him, were intended as teaching experiences that would hone her talent for chaos and bond her with chaos more closely so she would change sides; he kept trying to convince her that sooner or later the ponies would reject her because they hate chaos. She fell in love with a stallion and married young, and had a child... and then lost control of her power and almost harmed her child. Her husband turned on her, rejected her and fled with the foal, and her friends rejected her, and even her teachers were harsh with her over it. Brightest Star snapped, and attempted to take the chaos avatar role, first by killing Discord, then when that didn't work she tried to sacrifice him in a ritual to summon the elder gods, then when he escaped that, she managed to open a portal to the elder gods anyway and tried to fuel it by killing Celestia and Luna. Discord ended up fighting alongside them to stop her. She is Twilight's ancestor; she's also Screwball. She'd ascended herself into an alicorn, renamed Maelstrom; when they defeated her they removed her wings and horn, so she's effectively an immortal earth pony, who's lost her mind entirely and thinks of herself as a child.
Um... Can't he simply go somewhere far away that is not the moon and turn himself to stone? Or was that kinda what he was trying to do with the tree? By the way, great story! :)
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Discord can't turn himself to stone... I mean, he can but it won't stick. In my universe, it takes a great deal of effort for him to perform magic that's permanent, and even magic that's intended to be permanent would likely be wiped out by him dying or turning to stone unless it had had time to settle. If he turns himself to stone, he negates his own power, which means he turns back from stone almost immediately. So yes, he was trying to get the Tree to do it.
I got this list that I think would fit discord
sound familiar?
When you hate yourself because you feel that everyone hates you, when you're scared and sad and guilty, when you have a problem that's overwhelming and you have no idea how to fix it on your own - tell someone. If you can't work up the courage to do that, write down as much as you can and leave it somewhere where they'll find it. Discord should write this down in-universe, make a copy, and give them to Fluttershy and Celestia. Maybe make more copies, and give them to Luna and the Mane Six. Heck, give a copy to every pony in Equestria.
Worst-case scenario - Some ponies might dislike him more, thinking he's trying to manipulate them, but overall, nothing much actually changes.
Best-case scenario - Discord gets all the hugs and words of appreciation he needs (or more), everypony is friendlier, the princesses/Mane Six work with him to become a better draconequus.
5148571 He wrote this in his personal journal, written in another language in horrible handwriting, with the fake book covering call 3,001 Jokes In Ancient Griffonian. If he took so many precautions, do you really think he would tell anyone?
You know, this feels like a wonderful companion piece to World of Traitors.
That one had Tirek lamenting the fact that he won't ever be able to trust anyone every again after the betrayal he suffered at Scorpan's hands. Moreover, he claims that he lost all respect for Discord the very moment he (Discord) let himself be seduced by Tirek's words. Had he simply dragged him back to Tartarus, he would've thought higher of him. To him, stabbing Discord in the back was simply karma.
Because if Discord will switch from the ponies' side to his just like this, it's not a matter of if he'll betray Tirek at some point as well, but when.
And if you really get down to it, Tirek actually does have a sense of honour. When he offered to let Twilight's friends go in exchange for her magic, he stayed true to his words. He even let Discord go, despite not understanding how anyone could still care for a traitor like him. You could almost taste the disgust in his voice. He didn't even try to kill them when they were no longer of any use to him. And from what we can see, past Tirek didn't even fight his brother when the latter tried to talk him out of conquering Equestria.
Really, between the two, Tirek might actually be the one with a more robust sense of honour.
I... This hits way to close to home. This is my thought process for school and doing things in general. I always worry about becoming the me that refuses to go to school while at the moment I want to go to school, but because I know the me in the future won't care that I want to stay in school, I will ditch because of the massive anxiety overriding my logical mind. Every single thing he said is the exact process of my thinking, as well as my social anxiety and a bit of my depression.
He kinda reminds me of my schyzophrenic father!