• Published 1st Jul 2014
  • 3,193 Views, 359 Comments

Foal Fever - Distaff Pope



With a filly on the way, Vinyl's started dreaming about her glory days as Equestria's premier DJ. A mysterious potion offers her a chance to feel young again, and with Vinyl's youth restored, Octavia's pregnancy is suddenly a lot

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31. Happy Endings (Octavia)

I looked at our daughter sleeping soundly in the maternity ward. Her wings fluttered as she slept and I once again found myself wondering just how she got those. “You’re sure you didn’t accidentally have a one-night stand with somepony?” Vinyl asked, standing next to me. After the birth, we had both gotten several hours of sleep before meeting with our friends and family who had arrived to wish us well. Apparently, they had gone to several wrong hospitals due to the admittedly slap-dash nature of our pregnancy plans in Manehattan. Had this been in Ponyville, it would have been a like a well-oiled machine springing into motion.

“Absolutely positive,” I said, laughing at Vinyl’s joke. “My paternal grandmother was a pegasus, and I suppose that carried over to our daughter. It’s admittedly unlikely, but then our lives are a series of unlikely events.”

“So… no secret affairs then?” Vinyl asked as I leaned against her. After the last twenty-four hours, it was nice to have somepony to lean against while I regained my strength. Something told me I’d need it during the next two decades or so.

“None that I can recall,” I said before frowning. “We still need to come up with a name for her though. I don’t think we can just refer to her as ‘our daughter’ for much longer.”

“Yeah,” Vinyl said, nodding while keeping her eyes on our daughter. “I’m sure we can think of something, I mean, how hard is it to come up with a name.”

“It’s not hard to come up with a name, but it’s incredibly difficult to come up with a good name. I think we have something with the word racket though.” Something Racket. Winged Racket? No. Rebel Racket? Definitely not, something told me she was already going to be difficult enough. I didn’t need to encourage it in her name. Racket. Racket. Racket. Something Racket.

“Hey,” Vinyl said, pulling me out of my head. “You still worried about being a mom?”

I shook my head. “No. I’ll have you with me, so what is there to worry about? Besides, I really don’t think she can be any more difficult than you were.” It would be close, but our daughter’s mind wouldn’t be influenced by a corrupted age potion, so that was… something.

“So we’re cool right?” Vinyl asked while my mind turned over potential names.

“Of course,” I said. “I think you more than redeemed yourself yesterday.”

“Amazing how strange genetics are,” my father said as he and the rest of my family entered the room. “Never would’ve guessed we were carrying around a pegasus gene in us for two generations. Still strange that she’d have wings even though Vinyl doesn’t have any pegasi in her family tree.”

“It’s actually not that unlikely,” Lyra said. “Due to a weird quirk of pony genetics, each gene for determining race is kind of dominant. Like, the earth pony gene prevents the pegasus gene from being expressed, while the pegasus gene prevents the unicorn gene from being expressed. There are a bunch of other factors in play when determining that stuff to allow for greater pony diversity, but I’m guessing since Vinyl is purebred unicorn, her unicorn gene got cancelled out by your pegasus gene.”

I frowned, trying to visualize just what she was saying. Pegasus beat unicorn, earth pony beat pegasus, so did unicorn beat earth pony? “Does that mean we can’t have an earth-pony daughter?” I asked.

“Well, I mean, it’s possible if you have a few other genes, but… considering Vinyl hasn’t had an earth pony in the family tree for a long time, it’s really really unlikely. Like, I’d bank on winning the lottery before that happens.” Dammit. For some reason, the fact that we couldn’t have a daughter that was like me was more distressing than it should’ve been.

“Oh, she’s so beautiful,” Bon-Bon said, walking up to the window. “You two must be so happy right now.” We both nodded. “Lyra, do you think we could start working on a daughter of our own soon? We aren’t getting any younger.”

“Sure!” Lyra said, smiling. “There’ve been a few experiments on socialization that I thought would be interesting and–”

“We are not conducting experiments on our theoretical daughter.” Lyra opened her mouth to object, but Bon-Bon cut her off. “Not even experiments you insist are benign, especially since the last test you assured me was harmless involved a monkey’s paw and almost ruined our friends’ marriage.”

“Alright,” she said. “Still, I guess having a daughter would be kind of cool.”

Bon-Bon sighed at that. “‘Kind of cool’ is not a ringing endorsement for us having a daughter, Lyra. They aren’t pet rocks.”

“Wait, I’m sorry,” Vinyl said, “does Lyra actually think pet rocks are cool?”

“They are!” Lyra said as Bon-Bon just nodded. “They’re rocks, but they’re also pets. How awesome is that?”

“But–” Vinyl said before Bon-Bon shook her head.

“Don’t… don’t engage her on this, you have no idea how deep this rabbit hole goes,” Bon-Bon said. I smiled as my friends and wife entered into a conversation about the various merits of a pet rock.

“So,” my mother said, walking up next to me. “Have you two decided on a name yet?”

I shook my head. “We’re thinking of something involving the word ‘racket,’ but beyond that, we have no idea.”

“Well, her coat is a lovely shade of red. Have you considered naming her after that?”

“No,” I said, running the word around in my head. Red. Red. Red. Red Racket. It worked.

“Vinyl,” I said, calling her attention away from the conversation about pet rocks. “I think I have the name for our daughter.”

Author's Note:

And we are done. Thirty one days. Thirty one chapters. Seventy-six thousand words. It was fun and I hope you all enjoyed this little experiment. See you all for my next irregularly scheduled update, and if you will be at the Baltimare Baltimore Convention Center this weekend, I will see you there. I will also be doing a little post-mortem for this story after the weekend is over.

Comments ( 40 )

Congratulations on completing your goal although I'm sad that I won't get to read octascratch from you as much

Good story i'm sad that is has ended nothing better then coming home from dull work and reading a new chapter.
Now all that is missing is them raising there child and stuff.
Who knows maybe lyra and bon bon has a child and they become best friends and creates a metal band.
Or something i don't know would be a fun read tho!

Congrates! You are done! Loved consulting on this.

Red racket I like it stylish yet functional. Great story you had me on the end of my seat the whole 31 days.

Amazing series my friends. I started with the royal ponyville orchestra, and have read all of the sequels thus far, and I must say the way in which you write your characters brings out a great deal of depth that makes me want to read more. I also admire how you choose to kept the more personal parts of Tavi, and Vinyl's relationship mostly classy and simply more thought provoking than an actual play by play. Now although I do wish you'd quit picking on Tavi so much, because let's face it she's already on a razors edge as it is, I love how these stories have turned out and I hope to see more from you very soon.

Best wishes. :)

4780149 Thanks. I'd love to give this post a longer response to properly express my appreciation for your reading, but I am at bronycon and have to peck this out on my phone. Please feel free to message me any time and I will be happy to bounce whatever story ideas I have in my head off you. As always, thank you for reading.

4780551 Think nothing of it , and l I'd be happy to hear what kinds of story ideas you have. :)

I have loved this story more so than any other. I really can't see these two as anything but your versions of them. Thank you so much for providing this site with such a great fic. The humor is well balanced with some very important lessons that I think can make any person better. I look forward to anything else you write! The force is strong with you...

Wonderful and well done on completing your challenge!! I'm going to miss waking up to a new chapter every day though :pinkiesad2: but I'm looking forward to reading what else you have coming.

EEEEEEEEE :heart:
I am so happy I got the time to come back to finish this!

And then Red finds a little bottle of something stashed away in Vinyl's studio... :rainbowderp:

Great story, loved the characters, though I'd like to know more about what happened in the changeling incident.:twilightsmile:

4838922 I did and I really liked the idea so I stole payed homage to it. Lyra has pretty much become the theorizer of the strange in this verse so I needed to explain why her cutie mark was a lyre. I used the idea that the lyre symbolizes her ability to see connections between disparate ideas.

4839178
I'll keep an eye out for any more! :pinkiehappy:

Okay, so I read all of this thing in a week. I must admit that I regret not leaving more comments as I went through it, but I wasn't around wifi most of the time. All in all this was a very enjoyable story. So much happened and they still came out better in the end. Now that little Red has been born though... I hope you continue writing for this little universe you've made. Hopefully things won't be so hectic and stressful for Octavia now and she'll be able to raise her daughter in relative peace. I can't wait to read what you write next! Best of luck with your writing!

~SolidFire

5016653 Heehee... Octavia doing anything in relative peace? That's absolute madness.

Gotta read the PREqual.. But seems interesting. I'm a sucker for vinyl and Octavia storys anyways.

Well, that was quite a lovely tale. The fact you did it one chapter a day is really impressive, as the overall quality is very good. I must admit that some of the references to the Canterlot incident sounded a bit odd as you kind of changed that story into the far more light Bachelorette Bon-ding. I wonder how Red Racket will be as in personality (I hope less chaotic than teen Vinyl), and if they will have a second kid (hopefully more light Octavia). Oh and also, you gave me some stuff to thing about relationships that I never really considered before.
Anyhow, besides some random typing mistakes, I say it was a great job, keep the writing going.

red racket is the best they could do? meh my name is worse it's Brody (aka zevaroth,bonglong,pyroc,strum heartstrings. take ur pick there all me but when lyra is involved plz use strum)

5647183 cuz thats all i have on my comp jeez

5758727 Yeah, I think Weirdly Wed has the worst continuity snarl because of the retcon. Sigh, I really need to re-edit these stories one day, but whenever I do, I decide to just write new stuff instead.

5758758 I know what you mean. I was trying to revise my own work and slowly stopped doing so, focusing on just newer stories. Probably a bad habit for all writers.

Though you still may want to go back for both, they could use a speck of cleaning that would add another layer of quality, even if it is spot jobs.

Warning: Possible Spoilers!
This story/sequel pleases me :twilightsmile: While it was another long ride (which I prefer) I feel like the ending was a bit abrupt/rushed. The reason I feel this way, I think, is because of how drawn out (in a detailed way, not a bad rushed way) the rest of the story was. While the focus of the story certainly wasn't completely on the foal, it was still a big point in their lives throughout the story and kinda came to an end quickly. On the other side of that coin, I feel you managed to tie up the other issues nicely prior to Tavi going into labor. It was nice to see her parents being redeemed and hopefully having enough years left in them to cultivate a proper relationship with her. As for the butler, who the hell knows how he's not a pile of dust by now :twilightsheepish: Oh! Can't believe I almost forgot about Moldy! Wow that made me laugh so much! Talk about quintessential Vinyl Scratch living conditions. The way he/it refers to them and how Tavi describes him/it as sentient is just so comical to me for some reason . Maybe I'm easily amused (oh well, keeps life fun I suppose).
Putting pacing aside, I definitely give this story two hooves up. While you say it's not necessary to read RPO prior, I think it would be very beneficial to the reader if they did in order to understand Tavi's prior battles with mental instability, seeing that is only referenced in this story as opposed to explained in depth. That's what RPO was for anyway. The way this story is organized (alternating between Vinyl and Tavi POV) can get a little confusing at first but you learn to know who's head you're in easily if you know the characters well enough (as any regular reader of FimFiction would). Yes I know it tells you at the beginning of each chapter but I start overlooking details like that sometimes. :derpytongue2:
Continued character development here was decent, although it felt a bit off at times. Probably due to the unknown side-effects of the potion early on in the story until Lyra completed her research. What was a nice refresher was things going "right" for Tavi for a change. After being eviscerated emotionally and mentally in RPO, it was nice to see her happy for a good portion of the story (minus the several layers of Tartarus Vinyl dragged her through of course).
On the subject of chapter length, I think they were fine. Maybe even a little short but you got all the necessary details in where they needed to be I feel and pulling off that 1-a-day update schedule is impressive. It's good to set challenges like that sometimes. Might help avoid writers block when you just let the thoughts flow.
One last note: excellent improvement on the "I'm" vs "I am" usage. If it occurred somewhere, I didn't catch/notice it. Only 4? spelling/grammar errors noticed too. Well done!
Next on my list will be Princess Luna's Academy. Seeing how it's a rather daunting 225k, it'll prob. take me some time to get to it unfort. (life, right?) But once I do I'll be sure to leave some more feedback :pinkiehappy: Until then, happy writing!

5976017 One of the... interesting things about this story that might explain the abrupt Ness of the ending is that I wrote it in a month. Every day, I wrote an update, so if things seemed rushed by the end, it was probably because I was rushing them out because of how exhausted I was at the end of it, and the fact that it had to be finished by July 31. Also, I'm pretty sure I didn't say reading RPO was optional for this story. It works way better as part of the three-part alliterative epilogue to RPO than it does as something independent.

5976474 The pacing note was just me being a picky pain in the ass. I never want a good story to end but alas they must. I'm sure the idea of writing an update every day sounded fun at first but after a few weeks made you wonder why the hell you said that haha But regardless, in the end you pulled it off and left us with another great story.
Oh I must be thinking about another story when I said that about RPO. I read so many sometimes I get them crossed. My bad.

I loved both of these stories, my favorite TavixVinyl fanfics so far. I wish there was another one to read. I cried when I finished this and there wasn't anymore. I would love a sequel as would many others but if you never make one, At least you have these posted and it's better than nothing

6123682 Well, I only write sequels when I know how to properly continue the story. So far, I haven't had a proper idea for the sequel, and I don't want to mess with Tavi's happy ending right now.

Understandable. If you write a sequel, you want it to be good. As I said, Even if you don't, thank you for write these stories. They're some of the best I've ever read. 6123941

6124286 Thanks, and if you need a little more Octavia, she plays a role in The Unbearable Lightness of Being Sweetie Belle, although, as the name would indicate, Tavi's not the main focus.

Right. You know my 2 favorite ships are TavixVinyl and the other is ButtonBelle. So really like Sweetie Belle so I think I'll read that one soon. ^_^6125237

Just finished the series minus the Sweetie Belle arc. Enjoyed it greatly. I think you missed a chance to really delve deeper into everything by going the chapter a day route. When things went real down hill and dark with the memory erasure and Tavi learning of about it all was the best part. It felt rushed to a happy ending. After everything that happened to her, I would've expected a relapse to paranoia and madness. Overall, still very enjoyable.

6334528 Well, to be fair, the memory erasure thing was more a nod to a story I'd recently released, Memories of Shadow. If I was redoing things, I probably would have omitted it, but at the time I suffered under delusions of uniting all my pony works in one verse (Well... except for the clearly AU ones like The Shadow Over Ponyville... and Celestia's Eternal Empire, because I completely disowned that one). Anyways, yeah, there are a lot of things I'd like to change about the middle of the story, but I do like the ending, and I don't want to tamper with their hard-won happy ending.

Also, I would highly recommend reading the Sweetie Belle arc. I think The Unbearable Lightness is my best story so far, and it continues my long proud tradition of breaking my protagonist's psyches. Hope to see you in the comment section there.

6334670

Just finiahed chapter 1 and saw the disclaimer about not rated e for everyone. I'm already excited for it. My favorite story has been Background Pony. I felt you channeled some of it in your RPO main line. Hoping to see more of it as I read on. I don't mind happy endings but I love a hard fought battle for it. Real issues in life linger and never seem to quite go away. Things don't always turn out well and I enjoy seeing that reflected in stories. It's overcoming those struggles I really enjoy reading. Hopefully I can look forward to more great stories from you. You write longer ones which I'm thankful for.

Ok so, Honestly, I cried near the ending. The reason why is that I Found this song called "Octavia's smile" which is, sort of a depressing song and the first thing that came to my mind when I listened to that song was this story. I barely cry but for some reason I did during this fanfic. Which means that this is the best story I've read in my entire life. Props to you.

6657746 Thanks, it always means a lot to me when a reader says how much they enjoy my work.

6709168 You even read Only in Manehattan? (I really should create a place where the whole of the Orchestra-verse can be stored in an easy accessible format.)

6709310 Well, that's probably because it's called Only in Manehattan, and I published it just a few days ago, so it should be kind of easy to find on my user page.

during rackets rebellious stage in her life she will some how manage to have her name legally changed to Red Rocket instead of Racket because it sounds cooler

6770142 I don't think Rockets even exist in Equestria, and if you read the sewuel when it comes out, you'll see a bit more about her rebelliousness.

It's wierd, I started to read this month's ago and just lost track. Now I have finally finished it and can't understand how I got off track so. Great story.

Red Rqcket are you nuts. That sounds like deadpools dog, red rocket

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