Footnotes
[1] Blueblood would later insist that the shot came from the muzzle of a breech-loader.[2]
[2] He was, however, incorrect. Like most ponies outside the Canterlot nobility, the barmaid hadn't loaded her breeches since she was a newborn foal.
[3] The return fire came from the muzzle of a smooth bore.
[4] The barmaid was a Canterlot University graduate student supporting her education with a night job. Connoisseurs of irony may appreciate the fact that her name was Synecdoche.
[5] Not actually true. He stood too close while Poncemercy was relieving himself in the alleyway.
[6] If you don't believe this is possible, then you've never watched Blueblood do it. [7]
[7] At which point you will know for a fact that it is impossible.
[8] Celestia did not, in fact, own a linguistic warhammer. However, one of her relics from the days of the Qilinese empire was a linguistic sickle, which grammarians referred to in reverent whispers as the "Ox-Ford kama."
[9] If you didn't catch the bilingual pun there, I probably shouldn't have ruined it by pointing it out.
[10] And promptly ran around screaming about being on fire, before having the presence of mind to stop, drop and roll.
[11] To be precise, calculating the payments necessary for Synecdoche to resolve the matter of Blueblood's assault quietly.
[12] The actual statue for that — a nameless cow holding a milking bucket — was in a tiny cul-de-sac hidden behind the statue of Propriety.
[13] Modern stallions actually fulfill their civic obligations via jury duty. This didn't occur to Snails as a downside, because when the subject came up, his father told him to "jes' fall asleep when ya get ta th' courtroom, and they'll dismiss ya in a jiff."
[14] In his defense, she was a teacher. Teachers are supposed to be smart.
[15] Literally rolled by, like a tumbleweed.
[16] The others (as well as Poncemercy) had been picked up by palace guards when the tour group got separated, and were huddling in safety in the palace kitchens. Except for the Cutie Mark Crusaders, who met up with Princess Luna and had an adorable and wildly improbable adventure full of tree sap in which they failed to earn their cutie marks in Draconequus Confronting.
[17] These were technically Celestia's, but everypony was too busy with Discord to pay attention when Cheerilee grabbed them from the display case next to the linguistic sickle.
[18] "Ice cream for a year." "Done." [19]
[19] Negotiations later broke down over whether the agreement covered unlimited usage or reasonable daily usage; acceptable flavors; and the payment of shipping charges.
[20] The preceding days had been so wildly eventful that Poncemercy had run completely through his stock of catchphrases, and was being forced to recycle them.
[21] Yes, with a hoof. This is exactly as horrifying as it sounds.
[22] Nearly the entirety of the Royal Guard was in the room. Of course, since Equestria had been at peace for a hundred years (with the singular exception of Nightmare Moon's return), there was no reason to worry about a hostile army infiltrating the city during the distraction.
[23] It was definitely quite a rooster.
[24] The missing rhetorical daggers, after having been used to murder Equuish, were finally found in the corpse of Ancient Roamin and put back under guard. The other languages breathed a collective sigh of relief.
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A shout-out and thank you to everyone who read/enjoyed/critiqued it for the writeoff competition; to Titanium Dragon for the early signal boost that made me realize I'd better publish this ASAP rather than getting snarled up in my usual edit cycles; and to nemryn for this joke in Footnote 12.
Sorry about the delay in posting; there was a bunch of back-and-forth with the story approvers over the placement of footnotes.
The linguistic sickle and rhetorical daggers are truly a thing of beauty.
4801576
Also it doesn't count if you make the first post yourself.
4801576 Seriously? They rejected a great story because they didn't like how you did your footnotes? Who is this "they", anyway?
4801585
You saw it in the brief gap between when I thought, "I never made a first comment for my author's notes and now the story is live … GOTTA POST SOMETHING" and when I ninja'd in the comments now visible there.
Pfft, Mr. Speedy.
4801609
That is exactly what happened. It was resolved without drama, however, and so I do not want to unnecessarily stir anything up. Props to Obselescence for the assist, because Obs is a genuinely cool person.
So beautiful! Blue blood doing the right thing for all the wrong reasons
blueblood is a trainwreck i just can't look away from
Bloody brilliant! I must say, that while the whole thing is hilarious, I am especially tickled by the implication that Blueblood's going to end up like Napoléon II; in the future everypony will remember him as some great champion of freedom and justice, while the part where he's a poncy git gets swept under the rug.
Also, digging the footnotes. Very Pratchettesque.
Footnotes are truly a beautiful thing.
You wrote this? Seriously? I am pleasantly surprised. But you replied to me! You led me astray! Grr, that was just mean.
I really don't know how to feel about this.
On the one hand, what he's trying to accomplish is completely whack. On the other, he's at least somewhat aware how idiotic he's being, and that must suck big time. I feel sorry for him.
Well, at least one aunt realised what's going on with him.
Mors ex pun.
Number eight was a cringer.
The biggest crime in history is that one can't upvote this story monce*.
*Translator's note: more than once as according to Blueblood
If the road to hell is paved with good intentions, clearly the road to heaven is paved with bad ones.
4805497
I hope you didn't not read it as a result of that; it is a great story. I added it to that group because, well, it seemed appropriate? Also I couldn't find a generic Prince Blueblood group.
4805226
Given Blueblood's jerkward resolution utterly fails despite his best efforts and the story makes no pretense of him being at all anything beyond a dunce who'll hang himself if you give him enough rope- a sympathetic one but still a dunce-
Why yes this story was completely and utterly serious about every point it made. It should be taught in sociology classes. This is the new manifesto of our times.
This may be the snootiest fanfic I've ever read and I love it.
4801576
Also, this looks promising, re: footnotes.
Everybody's saying the footnotes remind them of Terry Pratchett, but they feel slightly different to me. More like the ones in Will Cuppy's The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody. And that is a very good thing.
By an odd coincidence, I happen to call mine Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.
That was really quite fun. Gotta love a Blueblood who is mostly harmless and accidentally very helpful.
4807115 I had to stop reading for a moment and wait for the laughter to stop when I saw Inside Job go by.
Thoroughly enjoyable. Even the part about the kama, which made me want to grab your footnotes and shake them up and down a lot. We really need a group for Dry Footnotey Humor.
4807104 You know, it was the same questionable moral of "Daring Don't".
Dash almost got Daring killed, but when she stopped Ahuizotl by sheer cartoonish luck, Dash was rewarded by getting a self-insert!
Really, that episode was like some bad fanon or like some plan by an obsessed fanboi stalker to get a celebrity to fall in love with him by engineering an accident from which to 'save' the celebrity.
In a more realistic setting, Daring would have told Dash to never bother her again, and then stopped writing when she finally realizes that writing about your exploits when your archenemies are still alive and coming after you is probably an incredibly stupid idea.
4802573
Do you realize you've just rewritten my story in 10 words? That's a magnificent compression ratio.
4802597
My legal team has advised me that, if this story has given you lasting atrial trainwrecks, I need to simultaneously advise you to see a doctor and serve you with a disclaimer that this story is sold as-is and its purchase is strictly at the reader's risk.
4803210
mylittlefacewhen.com/media/f/rsz/mlfw3030_small.jpg
Technically, I just guessed who the author might be. I apparently suck at guessing.
4807113
Ack! My atrial trainwreck! brb
4807164
I just got a new idea for what Blueblood's special talent may be. His compass cutie mark symbolizes his ability to have no idea where he's going, but still find a way through. We can imagine this saving his princely career on multiply hilarious occasions.
4807241
Having few to no redeeming traits can make for a useful character in a story.
Also, double negatives aren't necessarily wrong, and I was being somewhat silly. My point was actually "I hope you read this story, because it is really, really good."
Out of curiousity, why have you never published this story? It won another write-off, but I don't see it on your profile anywhere. Am I missing something, or did you really never post it to FIMFiction?
4807164 *squee* Senpai noticed me!
Spike belched a scroll, Twi asked " Is that for me?" "Sorry Twilight it's for Fluttershy" As he darted out the door,
Flutters opens the scroll , Dearest Fluttershy I have a mission for , , , , She finishes reading , This scroll will self destruct in . . .
She watched Blue blood from a far off hill, "He's such a meanie" She continued to watch till the exact moment in time.
Blue Blood felt an itch & wetness .As he looks down he sees a pair of fuzzy dice rolling snake eyes bouncing off the pubs dingy urine stained wall.
"Are those mine?" he says as the pain starts.
Dear Princess Celestia,
If you care for your pets be sure to spay & neut. . . .
Warning: frequent picking will cause disfigurement.
Y'know that kind of body modification that involves putting progressively bigger pieces of jewelry into one's ear lobe to stretch it so it permanently becomes like that? I'm thinking it's along those lines.
...I haven't thought of this since Green Isn't Your Color. Now I can't stop thinking about it. God, why can't I stop thinking about it? Really, how does that even work for ponies? Do they use their hooftip? Or do they stick the whole bloody hoof in there? Or do they mash their hoof onto their nose and hope something good comes from it?
This is unhealthy. I can't stop thinking about it...
4809259
Eeee I know!
I have no idea what the title of this story is a reference to, or what it means if it's not a reference. Anyone care to help, purdy please?
4811345
I'm glad you asked!
The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon is the essay in which Karl Marx coined his famous line about history repeating twice, "the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce." It's about a coup d'etat by Napoleon Bonaparte's nephew, the title calling back to the more famous coup of his uncle. In between that and a few gratuitous French Revolution references (Poncemercy being a Les Miserables riff, along with the barricade scene; and the description of the rabble is the first line of Baroness Orczy's The Scarlet Pimpernel), my story is basically a giant, silly mash-up of French history.
4806857
Hm. I'll have to explore that for future footnotes — it might lead to less hassle with the mods, if nothing else.
4802885 4803163 4806857 4807113 4807218
Speaking of footnotes, may I direct your attention to this new group, if you didn't see my earlier blog post?
4803641
You should see that one paragraph in Thou Goddess.
4804623
4805186
The more I read everyone's comments here, the better I feel about the story's
broken Aesopunusual but solid moral lesson.4807113
Thank you! I'll have to check that book out.
4807241
Amusingly enough, if you want to talk about underdeveloped characters, I also have a story about Sombra. Well, a poem. About how he turned dark in order to try to save the Crystal Empire from melting.
4807914
That's pretty brilliant. Actually, it even works in context here — since I was riffing off of it being the same as Daring Do's, and that seems to be how she operates in her adventuring, too! Headcanon: accepted.
4808646
Another good question! I intend to. After its writeoff, I started editing it. I got a few prereaders to savage it, and then tore it apart to tease the logic out a little more and make the story smoother. Then life happened. It's currently in a state of reassembly but high on my priority list.
4812004
If you're open for excellent stories which portray Blueblood with redeeming qualities, start with The Best Night Ever (MLP x Groundhog Day, in which Blueblood goes through the loops and a lot of character development). An early fic and still among the greats. AugieDog's In Their Highnesses' Clandestine Corps (a Blueblood/James Bond crossover, of all things) is also marvelous. The former was featured in the Pony Fiction Vault and the latter was featured in the Royal Canterlot Library.
Brewmare, though I'd like to think is of similar quality (having won a writeoff and a basically instantaneous Equestria Daily feature), just plays Blueblood's worse qualities for comedy.
You did a decent enough job of trying to fool us, but there was a lot of word use, the nicknames being the most egregious example, that was easy to identify as not Ghost.
As for the story, Blueblood being related to Derpy and Daring was new, though I feel it could have been anypony in this framing. The buffoon accidentally being a civil rights advocate was entertaining, as was his apparent causing of both Discord's release and the Changeling invasion. The footnotes were fun, but I have to say, one rose above the pack; the Ox-Ford Kama was punny as a pun can get, and I adore it.
4811958
...Mutters something about flying dinosaurs and poetry colliding...
For some reason, I'm reminded of Captain "Wrong Way" Peachfuzz from Rocky & Bullwinkle..
Most amusing!
4822633
Yeah, I wasn't fooling any computers either.
4824962
I'm sure I have no idea why you're talking about dimorphodons.
4830127
I must protest, sir! The evidence clearly shows that Napoléon's story was more subtle and nuancéd than that. After all, his statue was stone.
4855395 4868234
I suspect there's a Celestial fix-it project here — but it's not suffrage, it's Blueblood, as 4802465 suggests. And thanks!
You are a fantastic person.
I don't usually like when a character is handed an idiot ball for the entire story, but this somehow worked. Good job, author. Good job. I particularly liked that I was able to assimilate a new word into my vocabulary; "synecdoche" seems like a useful word to know!
In fact, I got to use it not more than five minutes after learning it. How's that for a coincidence?
5431632
Thank you! Blueblood, I think, is less about carrying the idiot ball and more about wholeheartedly embracing it as a core identity.
Glad I could be of educational service.
[8] Celestia did not, in fact, own a linguistic warhammer. However, one of her relics from the days of the Qilinese empire was a linguistic sickle, which grammarians referred to in reverent whispers as the "Ox-Ford kama."
Oooiihhhh goooooohd. That's... That's trancendent. You win the Pinkie Pie Lifetime Acheivement Award I Just Made Up For Puns.
5453080
I think the only appropriate response is:
5475946
Thank you!
Well, damn. That was really good, horizon.
5653623
Glad you enjoyed it!
Delightful. FOOTNOTES! Simply delightful. (Footnotes.)
4812004 Try also Ponydora Prancypants's The Flight of the Alicorn. It features Rarity, who has not forgiven Blueblood.