As I Was Walking Down The Stair, I Was A Pony Who Wasn't There
I'm just trying to decide who I'm going to use to do it. Maybe if I use this journal to talk through the options it'll be easier to figure out.
It can't be Golden Apple, because Applejack probably knows every single Apple in Equestria. That's too bad, really. I mean, the fact that he's an earth pony and that therefore I actually have to use my hooves to pick things up when I'm him used to annoy me greatly, if I recall correctly... I've noticed my memory from the time before I was stone isn't what it used to be. I suppose a thousand years is a lot of wear and tear on anyone's memory. Golden Apple would have been perfect for this because he was the rabble-rouser, the revolutionary, the guy who went to all the secret meetings about how can we possibly overthrow Discord? I'm chuckling just remembering that. All those ponies, thinking their plans were so Top Secret and being so afraid that if I ever found out I'd send secret police to take them away in the night (apparently, I had police? They must have been so secret even I didn't know about them), or possibly show up and turn them into a turnip. (Heaven forfend. Ponies plotting to rebel against my unrule were far too entertaining to make them into turnips. Though screech owls wasn't beyond the question), and there I was, in the form of Golden Apple, riling them up and encouraging them to come up with all kinds of ridiculous plans. Oh, I miss those days.
...is that a problem? The thought just occurred to me, I'm planning all this to prevent myself from becoming evil again, but if I'm looking back on the days of my unrule fondly, does that mean I'm evil now? I wouldn't do that now; I don't even want to take over Equestria. When Tirek offered that we could rule together, I had every intention of sticking him with all of the 'ruling' parts and only exercising my authority if he did something I didn't like. But I think back to how funny it was that those ponies trying to overthrow me didn't know I was a member of their revolutionary cells, listening in on all their plans, even contributing... and it's still funny. I'm sorry, it is. If you can't see the funny side of it, I feel sorry for you that being "good" has obviously caused a terminal failure of your sense of humor. (I have no idea who "you" are. No one is ever supposed to read this. Am I talking to my journal as if it's a pony? Should I animate it? Ponify it? Make it capable of having a conversation with me? No, not that one, somepony would overhear. Maybe I should give it eyeballs though.)
But that means I'm evil, doesn't it? Because I know perfectly well what Fluttershy's opinion would be, or any of the gang. They'd be horrified that I played a prank like that on ponies that wanted to destroy me. They'd be even more horrified if I told them that sometimes I used the information I learned about who they were to better disharmonize them; that trick always works better if you know enough about the target to know how to mess with their head, and hey, those ponies wanted to kill me, banish me, or imprison me, so by any standard they ought to have been fair game. But I know Fluttershy wouldn't approve. And yet... it's still funny! I know what pony morality says, I know what Fluttershy believes, and I want to be a worthy friend, I want to be someone she can look at and say 'no, Discord's not evil' and have it be true... but it's not, is it. I'm just fooling her. The only reason she's still my friend is she doesn't know how much I miss it. Not just the chaos – of course, I'd love to have the chaos back, if it weren't for the fact that right now I feel like having the chaos back would prove how terrible I am and that I don't deserve to have any friends. But I actually miss messing with ponies. Scaring them, disharmonizing them, finding just the perfect combination of cruelties to tip them over the edge into madness, or trying to lock themselves in a hut far away from ponies for the rest of their lives.
I'm not supposed to like that anymore. I'm supposed to feel ashamed when I remember the things I did. But I don't. I feel ashamed that I don't, but I don't feel ashamed. They were toys. They were fun to play with. They weren't real, like Fluttershy.
I know that isn't right. But I can't help feeling what I feel. Which is why I have to do this. I already miss messing with ponies' heads. How long will it be before I miss it enough that I sneak around behind Fluttershy's back and do it anyway? How long before the only reason I care about what she thinks is that she'll stop being my friend if she knows how awful I really am? (To be completely honest... it was several months after she made friends with me before I actually did start to care about what she thinks for any reason other than being afraid that she'd stop being my friend.)
So anyway. Golden Apple's out. Turbulence is an option; it's not like Rainbow Dash knows every pegasus that ever lived in Cloudsdale, and if I have him on the Vanhoover weather team, maybe raised in Las Pegasus rather than Cloudsdale, there's no way she'd think she ought to know him. But Turbulence isn't the kind of guy who makes friends and influences ponies. The last time I used him, I was playing weather pranks on ponies more or less nonstop, because if I was playing weather pranks in the form of a pegasus there was no way it was going to get back to Fluttershy in any way that she'd think it was me. I mean, he's fictional, so I suppose I could play him with a different characterization, but the whole point to giving them all distinct personalities was so that ponies who met them twice wouldn't figure out from the inconsistencies that they aren't real ponies. Turbulence is kind of like Rainbow Dash with a more aggressive attitude, less posturing about being an awesome stunt flyer and more about his skill with weather effects (which, since he's me, really are better than any other pegasus, at least in terms of getting the weather started... stopping it's another story, but who really wants to stop a really wild thunderstorm? Or a tornado. Sweet chaos, but I love tornadoes. I know ponies hate them, judging from the fact that pegasi are always shutting those things down and very rarely starting them, but I think they're marvelous. They're a solid cone of nothing but wind that destroys every pony-made object in their path, and a lot of things that aren't pony-made, like trees. If it weren't for the fact that sometimes they can kill, and I have never liked killing, I would have used them all the time.)
Eris is a draconequus, and after I was stuck for a thousand years as a statue no one is going to believe there's another draconequus around, considering they never saw any while I was in stone. Besides, anyone who knows Minotian knows that her name means the same thing that mine does. I suppose I could re-cast her as a pony femme fatale, but being a slinky sexy mare would probably only be good for influencing a pony or two at a time, not the massive outcry I'm trying to stir up. Besides... I'm just not feeling it. Anarchy is an alicorn and everypony knows there are no male alicorns, that there are only four alicorns total (which is actually incorrect but nopony's seen the Alicorn of Desolation in a couple of centuries... wonder if Celestia would tell me her name if I told her that I know about that one?), and also, educated ponies today know what the word anarchy means. I only got away with that one ever because pony vocabularies were a lot less sophisticated after I turned all the books into pies.
No. It's going to have to be Twister. Which could be a problem if anypony saw me shift to take on Tirek, but I'm fairly sure no one did. He's a unicorn, he supposedly has ties in Canterlot even if he's a weather pony in Las Pegasus (I looked this up; a unicorn doing weather working is actually not as ridiculous and implausible as I thought it was, which is unfortunate. I really wanted it to be ridiculous and implausible. But I suppose he's a better cover if his story doesn't seem impossible to the average pony.) He's already a member of one exclusive club, and while there's a fairly large difference between an upscale, discreet club for xenophiles of all species, and a club for wealthy upper-class unicorns, I know how they work well enough to be able to fake my way into a club. Twister would be better able to meet with some noble ponies, in a place where they feel free to say whatever they want, and get them on board with the idea of demanding justice.
I've been considering who can influence a fairly large group of politically experienced and powerful ponies who can actually bring pressure to bear on Celestia. So I did some research on the nobility, and I think I know who my target is going to be.
You hear that, Twister? You're going to go make a new friend!
(Why do I have conversations with the imaginary ponies I made up, anyway? It's not like I need them anymore. I'm not in stone. I can have conversations with real ponies.
Maybe it's just that I don't want to offend their little imaginary sensibilities and make them stomp off in a huff on their little imaginary hooves, because I know, where I'm going, I'm going to need them again.)
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I love the notion of Discord having a whole, um, stable of imaginary Ponies (and other things) he can become. Also, of Discord having used this shapeshifting in the past to mess with rebels against his unrule.
In my world, experienced alicorns can also shapeshift, and Celestia uses this to join Pumpernickel's Nocturnae conspiracy against herself in All The Way Back. I wonder if she got the idea from Discord? Not only was she a rebel against him for a thousand years, but before then they were friends, and she was thus experienced regarding Dissy's sense of humor (which was, basically, a nicer and more innocent version of Discord's). In fact, my Celestia and my Discord have a very similar sense of humor, with the difference that Celestia's is more constrained by morality and responsibility. (That's one reason they loved each other -- similar senses of humor).
My Discord would not have been able to resist infiltrating any band of rebels led by Celestia or Luna, all the more because it would have been challenging to fool them. There's probably stories in that.
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I wonder if one of my Alicorn Banes (powerful, concentrated-magic weapons, usually spears or bolts or swords) would work on Discord? They disrupt an Alicorn's normal regenerative power so that she can't easily heal the wound, and they can kill her if the wound is one that could kill a natural creature of her anatomy.
Probably not, because they work by chaos and Discord could rechannel their magic (come to think of it, Discord might be able to help an Alicorn heal from such an attack by absorbing the Chaos).
But it should in principle be able to make a weapon that would do the same to Discord. A Discord-Bane, so to speak. You'd want something Lawful or Orderly, such as a shard or outgrowth of the Crystal Heart or the Lawstone of Lith or part of Skleros the Greater Night Shadow from my world or Matrisse from yours. Anon's sword is obviously such a weapon.
Note that using a Bane to take down its intended victim is not easy. While an Alicorn, or Discord, would be quite rationally afraid of such a weapon, she isn't instantly reduced to gibbering cowardly helplessness by its mere presence. Instead, she is liable to use her considerable powers to either maneuver out of its effective range, dodge, parry or block it, or defeat the Baine's wielder.
Banes take major magic to produce and have a good chance of being destroyed in their use, even if successful. They are not guaranteed to kill even if they hit. In my world Celestia, Discord and Luna have all taken Bane-wounds at various times, and survived them. Twilight and Cadance haven't. Yet.
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Also, Osiris isn't exactly Set's innocent victim. Before Set slew him, he seduced Set's wife. Which may or may not be enough justification for Set's dismemberment of Osiris, depending on what we mean by "seduced" here, but then we're talking about Cuprolithic Pre-Dynastic or Early Old Kingdom Egypt here.
It does explain why the legend stresses Osiris' permanent loss of his, ahem, member in that dismemberment. Isis was never able to find that piece when she reassembled her hubby, because Set had fed it to a crocodile.
The problem with being stuck in stone for a millennium and creating a collection of alternate selves is that you forget there are people who aren't you out there. Discord has acknowledged Fluttershy's personhood, but he hasn't extended it to the species as a whole, and even if he did, he probably wouldn't accept the idea of actually talking to somepony about his problems. Why would he? They'd obviously just recoil in horror from his desires and delights, assuming they could even understand them.
I can't help but wonder who'll intervene, and when. This could get a lot worse for everyone involved before it gets any better.
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Both Chaos and Harmony based weapons have the potential to harm Discord, but for different reasons.
Harmonic magic tends to fall apart against his chaos field. You need some serious power to overcome that. Almost all unicorn spells are harmonic. The Tree of Harmony can do it, of course, and an alicorn who puts a great deal of power into it, so it's certainly possible to use such spells against him, but it's hard. Rune and symbol magic will work on him if he doesn't see it coming and disrupt the symbols first -- they are the closest thing Equestria has to order magic, and when order and chaos clash it's generally about who hit first, because they both have the ability to more or less destroy the other. Also, items that contain crystals from either Harmony or Order have a much faster ability to harm Chaos than the other way around (this is because Chaos's avatars are mobile, living creatures who can act a lot faster than either Harmony or Order's avatars can); while the blood of the Chaos avatar will eventually destroy a Harmony or Order avatar, the reaction's a lot slower than the effect of the Harmony or Order avatar on Chaos.
Chaos magic doesn't tend to interfere with chaos magic unless it intends to. So chaos spells do work on Discord. But under most circumstances it'd be really hard to harm him with a chaos spell, because chaos works by intent, not structure, and chaos likes the chaos avatar better than it likes most other users. A dark chaos spell -- that is, one fueled by entirely negative emotional energy, like dark magic is in general -- is a lot more likely to be able to do harm, but a practitioner would have to be really good or really lucky to harm Discord with a chaos spell.
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It occurs to me that there's the makings of a 4-axis alignment system here. Good-evil, Light-Dark, Order-Disorder and Harmony-Discord. Which might work better for an MLP world than the two-axis AD&D based system.
We know the system must have at least two axes because of the existence of post reform Discord (chaotic neutral) and Chrysalis (lawful or neutral evil, depending how you read her, but definitely not chaotic evil because the Changelings are actually very orderly).
7765518 What would the Light-Dark alignment be? If it isn't good-evil, what would be the point? I don't think light and dark in themselves have much representation aside from Celestia and Luna themselves, and the Nocturnae.
Another great chapter. :)
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No. Elements of Opposition takes place sometime between "Princess Twilight Sparkle" and "Daring Don't"; not sure whether it is before or after "Castle-mania." This takes place after "Twilight's Kingdom". They're in separate AUs which split shortly before Elements of Opposition, but No Escape From Yourself technically takes place later.
Just realised that Topsy Turvy day is a sequel to this.
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Sorta maybe? I’m lazy; I don’t want to recreate a backstory every time I jump into the future. So it might be a sequel to this, or it might be an AU future spinoff, depending on how this one ends.
Great work, and I can see how this literally eating his mind away. Beyond chaos to broken misery.
more?
Wow. I feel his pain and misery. I really do. It's heartbreaking.
More please????
Are you still working on this one?
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so uh
gonna continue this?
Please say you are still working on this one?
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Nothing I have started is dead, but I'm having a lot of trouble lately finding time and energy to write.
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I'm glad to hear you are continuing with your stories. I hope everything's ok though, and you find time to write
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I've seen only one serious instance so far in fiction of Light/Dark as a truly independent axis to Good/Evil, and you're right that it usually doesn't serve much purpose. None really if you're into morality plays. In that case, the idea was that as you get close enough to their cores both Light and Dark become completely amoral points of multiversal physics rather than comprehensible viewpoints. Functionally, the idea served as a way to sidestep what otherwise should have been incompatible orientations - you could have pacifist ascetics, cannibal headhunters, and despoilers of virgin goats as a harmonious group of friends provided they were all luminescence-aligned enough, because they'd never happen to come into conflict: all those reasons they really shouldn't be able to tolerate each other just got overshadowed... or (white)washed out.
'Twould feel a touch gimmicky as part of a large enough setting, though.