Oh chaos above this hurts why am I even trying to write in this thing when I can't sit down?
Okay. That's better. I've got a cloud to sit on now. (Not cotton candy. Why why why do I pull out the damn cotton candy every time I face this bozo? I like cotton candy fine, but I despise repeating myself. This is a cloud of sunshine, and yes, I know, I'm hurt and my magic is drastically depleted and it's a lot more effort to make a cloud out of a substance inimical to cloud, like sun, but I need this. I need a reminder that when his power isn't working on me, I'm still creative, I've still got my imagination and my sense of style.) I've lost a lot of blood and a major limb, but it's growing back. But oh dear how slow it is. Yes, I know, cry you a river, when you lose a major limb yours don't regenerate at all, but you know, it's not like I haven't paid for my power. It's not like I didn't struggle to learn to control what cannot be controlled, it's not like I haven't spent most of my life being rejected by ponies for it, it's not like I didn't spend a thousand years in stone--
No. Calm. I have to stay calm. Which is usually the antithesis of what I'm going for but I've never liked letting rage or panic take over, and for some reason with two thirds of my tail missing and the pain that just won't go away, I'm not feeling the giddy humor thing right now. Oh sweet chaos I want to make him pay for this. It hurts, you cannot imagine how much this hurts. You have a tail but it's mostly a small bone with a lump of long stringy hair hanging from it. My tail's part of my body, as much as or even more than my legs. Or it was until some ass of a human took a whack at it with a sword. Words cannot describe how badly I want vengeance for this.
Which is the last thing I can afford to let myself want. If I come back gunning for revenge I'll play right into his hands. (I like that word, hands! Means a paw with extended digits and an opposable thumb, like mine. Hands hands hands. I'm writing this with my hands! Hahaha, ponies, you have hooves and your pets have paws but I have hands! Rather griffony ones, but hands nonetheless. Dear me I think I'm going into shock. I don't even want to think about how much blood I saw all over the ground.)
I've just conjured myself a plate of nice, rare dead cow meat to eat. What? It didn't come from a real cow! I conjured it! Don't give me that look, I'm an omnivore. I don't eat meat often because, well, because I don't! I don't need to bare my soul to you just because I'm writing a journal of my encounters with the damned Seventh Element of Harmony that doesn't exist. I have reasons and I don't feel like sharing them with you. The point is, no, I do not actually eat real cows, because dead cows in your mouth cannot dance the polka. This meat never actually belonged to a cow any more than the cotton candy clouds ever belonged to a cotton. I just need red meat to replenish myself right now because that is what omnivores do when approximately a third of the blood in their body ends up all over the grass and not in their bodies anymore.
I should probably not write when I'm loopy from blood loss. I'm not actually nearly as funny this way as I am when I'm in full command of myself.
I'm going to eat this and then I'm going to get some sleep and hopefully by the time I wake up most of the tail will have regrown and then I'll tell you ponies all about my big fight and how I ended up sadly separated from my tail.
THIS HURTS THIS REALLY HURTS I CANNOT GET ANY SLEEP BECAUSE I AM MISSING A TAIL I'VE TRIED HITTING MYSELF IN THE HEAD WITH ROCKS BUT THEY DIDN'T KNOCK ME UNCONSCIOUS I WANT HIM DEAD I WANT HIM DEAD I HAVE NEVER ACTUALLY WANTED TO KILL A LIVING CREATURE BEFORE I WANT TO HUMILIATE HIM AND BREAK HIS MIND AND THEN I WANT HIM DEAD WHAT IS HE DOING TO ME
I CAN'T BE LIKE THIS
I CAN'T KEEP WRITING IN ALL CAPS MY HAND IS STARTING TO HURT
BUT NOT AS BAD AS MY TAIL OW OW OW
WHY WON'T THIS STUPID THING GROW BACK! GROW BACK, TAIL! COME ON, PLEASE?
Just so you know, those wrinkly spots on the paper are not tears because I am not crying from how much this hurts. They are lemonade. I dropped my lemonade. I was fortunate that only a few drops of it got on my journal.
My head hurts. Wonderful. He's got me top and bottom. The head's probably dehydration and stress. I... may actually have to switch from lemonade to boring old water. Or drink a mug of conjured blood. (I do have the fang for it.)
I don't think a pony can lose as big a chunk from their body as I just have and live through it even if they're an alicorn. That was supposed to be a reassurring thought, but for some reason it's making me feel even worse.
I'm going to die. I can't do this. I lose so much of my intelligence and my creativity and my savoir faire when I'm facing him. He's going to trick me with some mindlessly obvious trick that a foal could see through, and I won't see through it because he won't let me, he'll fog my mind and make me an idiot and I'll fall for it and then he'll cut me to pieces with that damn sword and I'll die. I don't see how this ends any other way.
I've got to get the sword away from him.
I've got to stop confronting him directly. He wants me to be the villain? Fine, right now I want to be as villainous as I can be all over his flank, but there's no reason I have to be so blunt about it. Work from the shadows, do just enough to make him think I'm plotting and planning and he's going to get his big showdown eventually. Do some things that look really evil but aren't. I'll relocate some Ponyville ponies to the lost Crystal Empire where they won't be showing up for a couple of months, given that that enchantment's about to snap, and I'll leave in their place stuffed plushies of them, and Mr. Seventh Element of gaaahhh, Protection, oh it hurts my brain to even write that, will think I turned them into plushies. That evil enough for you, monkey boy?
My tail hurts so much. Do you know what kind of nerves are down there? Some of that region's an erogenous zone and he just chopped it off. Oh, my masculinity's still quite intact but the underside of my tail can be very sensitive under the right conditions except not any more until it grows back because he cut it off.
Well, except for the part that I cut off. Because the stump was glowing, and it burned, and the glow was crawling up my tail, and the piece he'd cut off was glowing and disappearing in a rain of firefly sparks and I was afraid all of me would suffer the same fate, and I tried to throw my magic at it but it was harmony magic, I couldn't make it budge and it was eating its way up my tail, so I amputated a chunk of it myself, with a perfectly chaos-compatible sword I conjured before I had time to have second thoughts about mutilating myself. Now the stump isn't glowing anymore, and I've successfully managed to get it to start growing back, but the pain. Oh chaos the pain.
How I wish I dared to get drunk.
Well. At least this just hurts like a tail that got cut in half and not like Harmony's slowly burning me alive from the tail upward. Focus on the positive, that's what I always say!
I need to get some sleep. I don't know how that's going to happen when my tail hurts so much and I don't dare take anything that might possibly impair my thinking or my judgement and my magic is so weak right now, but it has to happen because I cant fight him without a clear head. He'll take me apart. Literally.
Well, ponies, you'll all be thrilled to know that I did finally get some sleep last night (or possibly night before last, because I feel as if I might have slept an entire day), and that about half my tail has grown back, and it doesn't hurt anymore. It itches horribly, but at least the pain is mostly gone. So I have a clearer head now. And as I have reviewed this journal, I've realized what a terrible oversight I've made. I started writing this thing because I wanted ponies to know what my opponent is really, but I've never actually explained that! Dear me, it's a good thing I survived this encounter, because that would have been deeply embarrassing.
So let me tell you about how all this began, how I first encountered my enemy, what he is, and then maybe I'll get around to telling you what happened yesterday.
Over ten years ago, maybe as many as fifteen (I may have mentioned not being all that good at math, or telling time, especially when I'm stuck as a statue and can't see daylight), I felt a sudden surge of chaos right near me, so close I could almost touch it, and I felt the bonds that held me starting to snap. Not because of the chaos energy, but because the Elements of Harmony, frozen in stasis for so long, were waking up, and all they had done before they went to sleep was beginning to reset itself. I observed a little filly who'd caused that surge, powerful enough to hatch a dragon egg and force-grow the infant to nearly full size, Celestia's personal protégé, and I knew, that would be the next Element of Magic. And as I followed the threads of "destiny" (a concept I don't believe in, precisely, but there is an operating force on ponies that at least somewhat resembles destiny), I found another filly, a pegasus, who'd triggered that surge in the unicorn, somehow. And she was connected to others as well. It took a long time, but what else did I have to do? Being a stone statue doesn't really fill one's social calendar much. I traced the paths of destiny out from that pegasus and found her connected to a total of five fillies, including the one with such powerful, chaotic magic within her. Now, I complain frequently that math is unutterably tedious for me and I can't often be bothered with it, but I can count to six. I knew who my opponents would be, when my prison finally weakened enough that I could break free.
A garden is a peaceful, boring place... not much in the way of chaos there, sadly. Disharmony was easier to come by. I'd push as much of my power out through the bonds that held me as I could to make ponies irritable around me, usually whenever I could find a large group of them. And apparently, Canterlot Gardens was the must-see place to go for foal field trips, and it's incredibly easy to make foals turn on each other. It doesn't last -- foals are very volatile -- but I didn't need lasting disharmony, I just needed quick, powerful bursts, preferably accompanied by some chaos, and one thing foals are good at is chaos. Little by little I built up a reserve of power, waiting for the day when the bonds would be weak enough that I could break them.
When I wasn't gathering my energy, I observed my opponents. It was terribly difficult, because being in stone meant that I couldn't see, and while for some reason I could hear, it's apparently not the done thing to go to the Canterlot Sculpture Gardens to gossip about fillies from Cloudsdale and Ponyville. But I could walk in dreams -- I had to be more circumspect about it after Loonie came back, but I can do it in the daytime, and ponies take naps. So I studied my opponents, learning their strengths and weaknesses, preparing a means of destroying the harmony within them and between them so utterly that no one would be able to stand against me.
And then I finally did it. I broke free. I attacked them, turning their strengths to weaknesses, turning them against themselves and against each other. I filled the world with glorious Chaos. And within about a day or so, I was in stone again. About the only possible upside to this was that the new bearers were mortal, and once one of them died there'd be a gap as the others adjusted to carrying the load, and possibly an even longer gap after they all died, so I was looking at 120 years, tops, not another millennium. But I'll admit it, I was... well, after having to wait so long after I'd already waited so long, and after I'd tasted freedom and had it snatched from me so quickly, to say I was "very unhappy" with the situation was a dire understatement.
So when my bonds broke prematurely, when I felt Harmony itself shift and twist radically under me and a massive displacement wave of transformed information hit the world's mana pool and charge my batteries, I didn't waste any time questioning it. I broke loose and promptly held a party for myself... in Zebrica. Hadn't been there in a while, and one notable thing about Zebrica, it is halfway around the world from the Elements of Harmony. Oh, you can get so much mileage out of varying patterns! Ponies get mildly annoyed if you change their colors, but if you change a zebra's color and alter the pattern of their stripes, you've just tipped over the bedrock of their whole world! Hilarity, I tell you. I had to dodge a few shamans, because a really good zebra shaman can be as dangerous as an alicorn in the right context, but it's astonishingly easy to tell a shaman from another zebra; listen for the rhyming. And if they speak at a normal speed, don't stammer, and don't miss their rhymes, then they're an experienced shaman, which meant they were getting a no-expenses-paid tour of Minos before they could pull anything out of their saddlebags and throw it at me. I might possibly also have put a few on the gambling floor of a casino in Las Pegasus. What? Ponies are generous; I'm sure one of the casino staff unicorns would have been happy to cast a cloud-walking spell on a suddenly appearing zebra so they could safely leave the casino. Most zebras have large gold earrings, so I'm sure they found something to pay for their transportation down to the ground with.
But, of course, home is where the heart is, and I love my little ponies far too much to abandon them for zebras forever. Zebras don't scream and run around in circles nearly as adorably as ponies do. And zebras are remarkably difficult to drive insane. I suppose when you don't have the magic to micromanage every little bit of nature around you, and you also have to live amongst lions as a regular thing rather than encountering manticores only on trips to exotically chaotic forests, you learn to roll with the punches. It's sometimes fun to watch them grimly trying to play parkour with chaos, desperately trying to route around obstacles and keep going on with their day, and if you discord a zebra they lose their stripes, which is funny to look at, but it does make it remarkably obvious what you've done. The idea behind making calm ponies little raging balls of fury and cowardly ponies put up their dukes is to confuse and upset the ponies around them who don't realize what's going on, thus spreading disharmony. When everyzebra can look at your target and simply ignore every last thing the poor zebra has to say because they understand that she's not feeling like herself at the moment, it lacks that certain wildfire flair that making ponies disharmonious can trigger. It's as if someone keeps moving some of your standing dominoes before the ones you tipped over get there, thus causing your lovely domino falling wave to stop short.
So I came back home once I felt that I was fully rested, recharged and ready to go. And as soon as I was back within the borders of Equestria, I had a glorious idea. An amazing, wonderful, hilarious idea, one they'd never see coming.
I was going to do the exact same thing that I did the last time!
In retrospect... if I'd been in the habit of thinking about what I was thinking, maybe I'd have seen what was going wrong then. But it hardly matters. It might be better this way; if I'd recognized what he was doing before I'd understood how powerful he was, I might have made the mistake of trying to challenge him directly on that level. I don't think that would have ended well for me.
Still, have you any idea how humiliating it is to remember having the idea "do exactly what you did the last time with only minor changes" and remember it seeming fresh and original and deliciously unexpected? To be the Lord of Chaos, harbinger of change, spirit of disharmony, and be so unbearably dull and unimaginative as to repeat oneself, and think it would be exciting and fun? I could forgive myself for it if I'd been thinking of it as wittily ironic, perhaps a critique of the predictability of perpetual unpredictability, but no, I wasn't nearly sharp enough to think of that.
I stole the Elements of Harmony. (The spell protecting them was better this time; it had both Celestia and Luna's signatures on it, and Luna is good at traps. But when I decide to be patient and careful, I can be very, very good at disarming bombs. Stop laughing, that wasn't a joke. I actually can be patient and careful when I want to be; my problem's more with the fact that that is enormously boring, so I have to want something a lot to bother being patient or careful.) I stashed them at the Castle of the Two Sisters, hanging them back up in exactly the place they'd been when my dear, sweet nemeses found them in the first place, because "back where you began" could refer to the library where they first learned about the Elements or it could refer to the place where they first found them. (Or I could have hidden them in Celestia's castle, but that's a trifle too close.) Then I poured a big bucket of chaos all over Canterlot so that Celestia would summon the Element Bearers. (I'm lying. It was cotton candy with chocolate milk. See my frustrations up above, near where I was ranting about my tail. Or don't, because I'd kind of prefer you never read that again.)
Luna was asleep, of course, same as the last time. The last time I'd just bespelled her to stay asleep. This time I decided to have a bit of fun with her. I appeared to her in her own dreams -- where of course she's quite powerful, a dreamwalker on home turf is nothing to sneeze at, but I'm familiar with all her tricks -- and when she tried to wake herself up so she could alert her sister that I was back, then she discovered I'd bespelled her to stay asleep. So she came after me, and oh, was she ever ferocious. Pulled out all the stops. Even sent her alter ego against me, as a separate entity. It was loads of fun. Especially the part where I lured them into a lower dream level, disguising what I was doing with so much pyrotechnics, chaos, and innuendo-laden taunts at the two of them that they had no opportunity to notice how far down they were, and then spun them a completely normal, realistic, reality dream and let them wake themselves up into it. Well, let Luna wake herself up, I had no idea where Moonie went after Woona went for my bait.
See, Luna is the Princess of Dreams, and generally speaking more powerful than I am in a dreamworld, but I've spent a thousand years living in dreams I've been constructing for myself. I am much, much better than Luna at inventing a dream that feels real, because while she was able to walk all over the moon and gaze down at the world below, I had nothing but the dreams I made for myself. Now you may ask me, "But, Discord, you turn the real world into a surreal dream landscape every chance you get, why would you bother to learn how to create a realistic, orderly dream landscape?" And the answer is, if you walk in the door and there's already chaos, that's fun to watch, but it's purely a spectator sport. I am an artiste. I enjoy looking at the paintings of others, but what I truly love is to paint my own. So it is much, much more fun for me to corrupt an orderly, normal-looking world and turn it into chaos than to live in a world that's already chaos. I made reality after reality after realistic reality so I could at least pretend I was actually alive and moving around when I unleashed my havoc onto them.
It never really fooled me unless I was actually asleep, but I got it to the point where the only reason I knew it wasn't real was that I knew I'd invented it, and knowing that, I could feel the hollowness in it. Luna would be trapped in my dream for quite some time, believing she was undergoing normal, boring life as usual. Well, as boring as life gets when there's an imaginary moi running around, but Luna wanted to believe the Bearers would quickly solve my riddle and win the day, so that's what I gave her and she fell for it.
Then I put her in a diaper, an adorable little bonnet, and the most precious little baby nightgown, alicorn sized, and put her in a rocking cradle. Celestia met with the Bearers outside her inner sanctum, and led them in to have her discussion with them -- which was also astonishingly repetitive -- and went to open the new, improved lock for the Elements. And found me inside, dressed as a nanny, rocking the cradle with Luna in it. "Shh!" I said. "Don't wake the baby!"
Well what do you know but Celestia gave out an ear-splitting screech, right after I'd warned her to be quiet, too. "Discord! What have you done with my sister???"
"As if I'd do anything to sweet wittwe Woona!" I said. "Look how adorable she is, sleeping peacefully... you know, they're so much sweeter like this than when they're awake and screaming at you. Ever wish they could just stay sleeping forever?"
In the general chorus of dismay, I heard a masculine voice, to my surprise. "Luna! You evil bastard, if you've done anything to harm her--!"
"Why does everypony think I'd hurt Luna?" I complained, teleporting out of the Elements' sanctum and into the main hall, as I sent Luna's cradle to her old bedroom in the old castle. "I would never harm that sweet little face! But you might, if you make the wrong decisions."
There was a newcomer to the group, I noticed, now that I was directly facing off against them. A male human. I confess I was quite surprised; it'd been a long, long time since I'd seen one of those, and he'd have to be a worldwalker, or have fallen through a portal, to have ended up here. Immediately I decided to link the enchantment on Luna to the male human kissing her. That joke was so obvious, it was screaming at me to be done. "This is new!" I said cheerfully, twining myself around the human. "Tia, where'd you pick this one up? Magicless Bipeds R Us? Quills and Couch Potatoes? Or is he your mail order husband?"
"He belongs to all of us!" Rarity snapped. "And if you value your life, Discord, you'll keep your paws off him!"
"Oh my! Is Generosity getting greedy again? He doesn't look like such a prize. Though I'll admit he might be an improvement over Tom."
The human glared me in the face. "Back off, Discord," he snarled, and for a moment, I was afraid. Of a human.
Let me back up a bit here and explain why this is ridiculous even by my standards.
Your average mare is about three and a half heads tall, maybe four. Your average stallion is between four and five heads. Celestia towers over most of her little ponies at six and a half heads tall. This is the height of a tall human. Humans are bipeds, so of course if Celestia rears she's a lot bigger than the human, and a normal pony rearing would be within a normal range for human height. Now, my height varies depending on how big I feel like being this minute, but if I'm not doing anything to modify it, I'm ten heads tall bipedal and about seven quad. (Counting down from my head, of course. A lot of that's in my neck.)
Humans do not have hard, strong hooves like my goat hoof. They do not have semi-flexible, powerful hooves like ponies do. They don't have hooves at all. Their hands are like mine, dextrous, attached to arms that aren't very strong in comparison to their legs, delicate and relatively weak but very, very, very useful. However, theirs don't end in claws; they end in thin keratin plates that stick out the end like someone was trying to design them with claws and just couldn't draw. These are sharp enough to do a little bit of blunt-cut damage to human skin, which has no protection on it, neither fur, feathers nor scales, but against a creature with any protection whatsoever they aren't much. Their legs are stronger than their arms, but no match for a pony's, and their feet are shaped roughly like my dragon foot, with a lot less dexterity, less balance, and no claws. They don't have a tail at all. They don't have wings. And they don't have any magic.
This wasn't always true; their world had magic once, but something happened to it. I have no idea what, because I don't care. On the human homeworld nothing is sapient but themselves and some sea creatures, so they got to the top of the food chain by being smarter than everything else. They're not, however, smarter than ponies (not stupider, but not smarter), and they are most assuredly not smarter than moi. And they have no physical advantages over me whatsoever. They are shorter, they are weaker, they have no tail, they can't fly, no skin protection anywhere, their hands are as good as mine but have no claws on them, neither their legs nor their feet are as strong as mine, and while they are omnivores they have a lot fewer meat-eater teeth than I do. They have some advantages over ponies, hands and height, although ponies have magic so I think humans do worse on that deal as well. They're much more aggressive than ponies, but that just makes them more fun to taunt than they'd otherwise be, considering how weak they are.
So the thought that I would be scared of a human for even the tiniest of moments, that I would back away because an omnivore predator who is substantially less impressive in the predator department than I am glared at me... it's ludicrous. And yet it happened. I backed off.
But I covered for it, chuckling. "Feisty, aren't you!" I said.
"What have you done with Luna?" he growled at me.
"I just put her to bed, of course. She needs her sleep! Stays up all night, every night, poor dear."
He lunged at me, grabbed my beard and dragged my face down to the level of his. "Give her back!"
"Of course, of course. Just as soon as you ponies solve my riddle." I grinned at him. "And you, though I suppose you're not a pony at all, are you?"
"He's a human!" Pinkie Pie said.
"He's our human, so hands off!" Applejack snarled.
"Tell him that. He's the one grabbing me." I teleported out of his grasp and up into the air. "Ready to take notes, mes amis?"
Twilight actually pulled out a notebook and started doing exactly that as I recited. "A weighty choice is yours to make, if a sleeping princess you would wake. Follow the path of twists and turns, if the Elements' place you seek to learn. Once you've returned back to the start, then wake the princess with your heart. Or seek her out without a guide, if you believe my words are lies, and trust your power and your pride that you can cause the moon to rise."
And then I delivered a garden variety maniacal laugh and left them there.
Predictably, they had an argument over whether they could trust me or not, since I'd just basically thrown down a gauntlet and said "play my game, or assume you can beat me without playing." The human was all in favor of assuming my words were lies and going and looking for Luna directly, and Rainbow Dash agreed with him, but Celestia pleaded with him to reconsider, saying that as great as his power was, it was no match for mine, not without the other elements, and that if he arrogantly assumed he could easily beat me, he might be throwing Luna's life away. This seemed a little odd to me -- Celestia really should have known I don't kill ponies and I wasn't going to start with Luna -- but it worked; the human decided that I was so childish, if he refused to play my game I would kill Luna out of spite, and that was the meaning of the riddle.
In retrospect this is bitterly laughable, that he'd call me childish. But I didn't yet know what he was, or what he was doing.
Whew! Writing is exhausting work! How does that little dragon stand doing it all the time?
Now if you'll pardon me, I need to go do something subtle, yet so blatantly obvious that my idiotic enemy will pick up on it, so he knows I haven't forgotten I'm the villain here. I do declare, when am I going to find time to actually fight him for real if I keep having to go have pointless confrontations?
I have no idea what I'm going to actually do, but I find my most creative ideas usually happen that way. All I know about what I'm going to do is this:
It has to at least look villainous.
It has to not violate any of my personal codes of conduct, such as "don't turn ponies into stone" and "don't be a complete uncreative putz".
It has to stay well away from the Element of Protection And Also Rewriting The Laws of Magic And Also Swinging Really Nasty Swords.
It has to not bore me completely.
It has to have no chance whatsoever of me ending up in stone or dead before I'm done with it. So if I'm going to go play a game with somepony, it's going to have to be completely unfair. Le sigh. Well, I'm not doing this for entertainment primarily... though if I do things that don't entertain me, I risk losing myself, since "everything I do has to be amusing" has been one of my core values for millennia.
Terribly sorry to leave you all on the edges of your seats like this, but needs must when the devil dances, or so they say. I'm off to be a bad guy for a bit! Don't worry, I'll finish telling you all about Tall, Bland and Homicidal when I get back.
Or I won't. In which case you probably already know who he is. And it's probably too late anyway.
Arrivederci!
Hmm... Deity levels.
AlphaOmega(theorized)- Possible high deities beyond the bonds of this and any plane of existence, meant to keep multiverse in check.
Alpha-True deites (ie, Zeus!Prime, Ra!Prime, Odin!Prime)
Beta- Real ficitonal deities (ie, Arceus!Prime, Slannesh!Prime, Primus!Prime)
Gamma- One world deities (Bad human oc, Marvel!Odin, Anime!Arceus)
Delta-High immortals (Discord, Galactus, Anti-Monitor, Tabuu)
Omega- Low immortals (Master Hand, Captain Marvel!DC)
Prime denotates the main universe from which all others break off from, So Arceus!Prime is the true Pokemon God, and Zeus!Prime is from a real world setting where Greek gods exist.
What do you think?
Good as always. I wonder how the Main Six, once the hypnosis spell is off, will react to the fact that their boyfriend attempted to kill someone, even if it is Discord. And why does Gary ( is his name Gary?) have a sword? This is 2012, dude.
By the way, that was a really fast update, you'll spoil us if you keep that up!
5018779
I'm only counting three because I don't feel like going higher:
- immortal who's bound to a force or concept, extremely powerful, might be worshipped
- reality warper, can alter the fundamental tenets of reality, doesn't know what he or she is and believes themselves to be a normal person -- Haruhi Suzumiya, Gary Stu
- true god, the creator of a universe, has total power over it but can never enter it -- the best they can do is create an avatar of themselves to run around in it, but that is not them
Or, in terms of fiction:
- a godlike character you write about
- a self insert you have warped the entire universe around
- you, the writer
I don't really get any deeper into metaphysics than that.
5018806
All hail the Writer, creator of all that is words upon a chapter!
This is really good. What's the count....Second Chapter!? Well this is definitely becoming a favorite. Update soon!
5018796
Why shouldn't he have a magic sword? Probably created by his own reality-rewriting power or something.
5018796
Because swords are kewl. And no, his name's not Gary. Discord hasn't figured out what his name is. There's a reason for that.
This one may possibly fall into the "white heat" category of fics that I just keep writing until I'm done. Maybe. At least I expect to be updating it frequently for a while. I'm working in the background on The King Who Would Be Man, also.
5019216 I don't know, I guess I would expect him to have a gun or something more modern.
So, one thing that occurred to me as a possible thing for Discord to do is to kidnap and "brainwash" a pony (with, you know, the truth and so on - and probably a terrible dress sense) - it seems like it would fit in Gary's rendition of things, be beneficial for his plan, and has the potential bonus of letting us see Twilight Snarkle, or something equally entertaining.
5019238
I'm going to guess that his name is "Mine". Just so that he can have the entire Mane Six saying "he's mine!" without actually disagreeing with each other.
5019253
I would have expected a lightsaber, and probably some comment about it being "not as clumsy and random as a blaster" at some point...
5019253 But guns are typically considered less "Goodguy" than a sword is. Having guns is, tropewise, decidedly neutral on the scale of good and evil. Having a sword says "I am capable, I am Skilled and I am fair." They're also more dramatic and capable of flair and drama. Being shot doesn't really allow someone to die with dignity
Damn, there's like one line of dialogue from the human and he already rubs me the wrong way. I don't know why, he just really does. Based off of one line.
WHAT IS THIS
The Element... of Protection. Wow. This really says all we need to know about the intellect Discord is facing. Protection is not something done between friends. You protect those who cannot protect themselves. Children. The injured. The emotionally vulnerable. To "protect" someone fully capable of protecting herself is to state implicitly that you don't trust that person, that she is helpless without you. And when you're an unconscious reality warper, that implicit belief becomes reality, and six of a world's greatest heroes are reduced to sycophantic damsels in distress. Disgusting.
In any case, looking forward to more. The Gary Stu's power at work is frighteningly insidious. Great job there.
Being a HiE fic writer, I cringe while reading this, because it is so true for so many terrible, terrible, terrible HiE fics out there and a critique of the genre from Discord's perspective is refreshing as it is scathing. It still makes me bleed from genre association, but I suppose that can't be helped.
Also I am glad this fic takes a whack at the herding trend, a preposterous assumption of pony society given what we know from canon and, frankly, a disgustingly fetishistic trope I see in too many fics, HiE and non-HiE.
Loving how you write Discord by the way, very believable.
Keep this up, please, best Discord writer.
That stuff about the tail was... well, you made me feel really bad for him. So good job.
YOU CAN DO IT DISCORD! WE BELIEVE IN YOU!
Huh. I'm new to MLP Fanfiction, and I thought it was a joke, but apparently... Herd relationships are a real fucking thing in some SI fics?!
How the hell could you possibly come to the conclusion that ponies usually go into polygamous relationships?!
I mean, they are sentient, and as humans go to show, sentient beings don't like sharing their intimate partners with other people. And they're also about as emotional as humans, maybe even more emotional. And it's obvious from the show that ponies aren't exactly the BEST at sharing...
---
Anyways, great story! I can't wait to see how Discord outsmarts a reality-warping, mind-controlling half-brained Stu.
This actually looks pretty bad for Discord, considering the degree this human can change the rules while playing.
I might be wrong, but physically hurting a being that can turn its own head into a balloon, make its body parts fall off, set its ears on fire and remove its own eyes just as a visual gag seems a bit like cheating to me.
After whacking my brain for a bit (Work, damn thing, work!) I think Discord's only real chance is staging a false defeat for himself so that the human stops expecting him to act in certain villainous ways. If the human thinks Discord is defeated and not a threat any more, Discord might actually be able to do something without his mind being warped.
5021005 Sapient not sentient!
Dogs and Cats = Sentient
People = Sapient
Sigh it gets frustrating to correct people about that. Why oh Sci-fi genre did you mistake those two? Even Star Trek has it wrong.
The idea of polyamory isn't so far fetched regarding ponies, they still are herd animals in their roots, so they'd look up to an alpha that guides them, which princess Celestia as a female alpha practically does, or regarding mating habits, one stallion taking care of multiply mares.
The idea also makes sense when looking at the gender ratio. Almost every scene shows a 1:3 balance in gender. More mares less stallions, If the mares don't want to end up alone or in gay relationships, they have to compromise with other hetero parings, at least that's what the fandom considers an alternative, but it makes sense when thought through.
The repetitive chance to find a stallion of interest around the area the mares live in, is much slimmer then for humans.
If two mares compete over one stallion they both like dearly, they would have the possibility to share him instead, if every party involved agrees with it, which can be considered believable regarding herd mentality, additionally with the ponies boasting and praising harmony so much.
Of course, considering all this, 'herds' or polyamory would only be tolerated or generally accepted, but not pressed. It is just an option for areas where the gender ratio is unbalanced. And even then, while it may be legalized there, because Celestia might say "It's in our roots anyway" the nobles and high society families in equestria may have a different attitude towards it, still looking down on it, or even out right despising such an option.
The majority in pony society would be acceptable though.
- Polyamory does exist in human society, and with ponies being originally herd animals, we can't dismiss the possibility of it being accepted there to a higher degree than in our society. -
Naturally, the series shows quite the opposite because they can't openly support polyamory on a television show, where it's considered unlawful, don't want to encourage children to go after something that's shunt upon you know.
Then again, polyamory in our society is mostly shunt upon because of mainly religious reasons anyway.
We learned through our society, that it's wrong to love more then one person intimately, while the society is heavily influenced by religion none the less. If society taught us it's 'bad' to support polyamory, naturally we grow up with the idea of it being not right and shunt upon. That way all couples think alike in that aspect, so they don't dare to try it, also accusing each other of infidelity if another person comes with as much love interest into their life.
But if a group of people would agree on having more than 1 partner for life, and if the chosen partners are okay with sharing, it wouldn't be much different from any other 'struggling for acceptance' minority (gay couples in example).
I go as far as to argue, if our various religions accepted polyamory more and it was fully legalized in our societies, a lot more people would openly decide for this option, because they'd prefer to have more then 1 partner, especially in our modern times.
Finally, that's another point, Pony religion's are different from ours and may not expell the idea of polyamory like our religions.
Which of course in turn means, a society less phobic of such things as 'herds'.
5021770 ...Oh...
Thanks for that in-depth explanation!
Sorry for making you waste your time on me.
5021795 naaaahh 'tis alright.
5021303
You're preaching to the choir, brother. :-) Long before I was a fan of Discord, I was not a fan of "order is good/chaos is evil", conceptually, because in the 20th and 21st century, the greatest threats to human life and human freedom have come from order, not chaos. In the past, anarchy and warlordism were common, chaos interfered with the human ability to control our environment and our choices in life, and law and order created the stability that allowed humans to thrive and advance. But in the 20th century, the order of interlocking treaties caused the first World War; the totalitarian states (Nazi Germany, Communist Soviet Union) murdered millions in systematic ways, and in the 21st century, the control of too much information about people is a signficant threat to freedom and safety. In the modern age, chaos is freedom. Pure chaos isn't acceptable as a way of life, but pure order is tyranny. So I want to stick a fork in the eye of any idea based around chaos being inherently evil, and since becoming a fan of Discord, that comes up a lot.
I will say this: I do think Discord was malicious, and if "evil" has any real meaning whatsoever, I think he was evil, or at least committed evil acts, for a fairly long time. He's the spirit of disharmony; he thrives on causing conflict, getting under people's skin, and being a troll. This makes him a jerk, and when a guy with godlike powers is a jerk who wants to use you for his personal entertainment regardless of what you think about it, that's evil. But it's not "Bwahaha! Summon the Eye Of Sauron!" Ultimate Evil; it's more like the kind of evil of nasty little punk kids who think it's funny to let the air out of your tires. Discord was a bully and a malicious prankster, not a tyrant or a mass murderer. And while I think his natural ability to feel empathy is somewhat impaired, the Season 4 ending proves it's not absent; Discord's not a pure sociopath, just an immature jerk who's still capable of learning how to feel sympathy for others. And I've never had any patience for writers who confuse the concept of "jerk" with "evil" (this was why I loved Severus Snape so much; J. K. Rowling's writing was fairly flawed and I was never an obsessive Potter fan, but the fact that she created a jerk who was a hero but still a jerk was awesome and has won her props from me for life.)
5021770
While I think that herding is biologically viable for the Equestrians given that ponies in real life do have one stallion = multiple mares, and the observed stallion dearth, I think that there is no canonical support for it being a widespread practice.
It's a kids' show, but you can see evidence of close friendship that could be standing in for romantic intimacy. So there are characters who you can easily imagine to be in a romantic relationship with each other even though no such relationship is directly shown. We see that with Discord and Fluttershy, where they behave with a lot of physical affection toward each other. We might see it between female ponies -- personally I don't ship any of the Mane 6 together but Pinkie behaves as if she might possibly have a crush on Rainbow Dash, and Rainbow and Fluttershy are also very close. But we don't see any evidence of one male and more than one female being together in a close affectionate friendship.
We see signs of one male showing interest in more than one female -- Discord can be interpreted as being in love with Fluttershy, but Three's A Crowd, where he goes well out of his way to solicit attention from Twilight, makes it look like he has a crush on her. And we see signs of one female showing interest in more than one male -- Fluttershy is very physically affectionate toward Discord, but surprisingly flirtatious, given how shy she is, to Bulk Biceps. However, in neither case do the two of the same gender appear to have a close, potentially romantic friendship; Twilight and Fluttershy are good friends but both of them are closer to other friends within the Mane 6 (and besides Twilight isn't interested in Discord), and Bulk Biceps and Discord don't show any signs of even knowing each other.
For there to be signs that hetero polygyny's actually a common thing, we'd have to see evidence that one male lives with multiple unrelated females or has close, potentially romantic friendships with multiple females who also have strong apparent connections to each other (the strong connections could be rivalry or friendship). We don't. We see monogamous het couples (the Cakes, Shining and Cadance) and we see female background ponies who are often seen together in pairs, or close friendships between females, but we don't see one male having potentially romantic closeness with multiple females and we don't see one male living with multiple unrelated females... actually we do, now that I think of it, but it's clearly a situation where there's a defined couple and an extra female. The Cakes live with Pinkie, but if Pinkie is in a poly relationship with them, she is very much a junior partner, an extra add-on, not a co-wife.
So my thought is that polygyny is a biologically viable Pony relationship strategy, just as it is biologically viable for humans, but it is looked down on and culturally suppressed in Equestria, probably for good reasons. In our society, polygyny is suppressed because wherever it's institutionalized, it results in the exploitation of women and a fair degree of repression of young or poor men by old or rich men, because in order to have more than one wife when the numbers of men and women are close to even, powerful men must take potential wives from less powerful men. In Equestria, with the stallion dearth, the evidence of mild matriarchy, and the emphasis on strong female friendships and harmonious behavior, I suspect the reason is it leads to exploitation of stallions, where a group of mares seek out a stallion to share together and then have power in numbers over him.
This doesn't mean a happy, non-exploitative poly relationship couldn't exist, and I'm sure some do, but they're not common. They're not high status, so they would not appeal to someone like Rarity. They don't result in a new fellow farmhand to share the labor, so they wouldn't appeal to Applejack. And having four mares and one stallion where the four mares are close friends who knew each other beforehand and the stallion is an interloper is very, very likely to produce disharmony; either the mares will essentially dominate the relationship, or the stallion is so valuable to them that they will defer to him, but that produces conflict between them because sharing something so valuable is potentially contentious. I think a poly relationship of one male and two females is viable with two members of the Mane 6, if they're the right two females and the right male, but all six of them, or even four of them, being in a herd with one male is ridiculously OOC... which is, of course, exactly why it's happening in this story. :-)
5022460
Yes you are mostly right, but then again the only reason why we don't see polyamory in the series, similarly well hinted as 2 ponies of the same gender showing flirtatious interest in each other, which you pointed out is somewhat vaguely shown or hinted at some points, is because it's much more shunt upon by human society, and isn't even remotely allowed to be vaguely hinted in a television series that children watch.
It's not much different for homosexual or bi-curious couples. While we do see very vague hints that can lead to easy speculative assumptions or interpretations for us grown ups, meaning implications that some mares may be interested in each other romantically or even date each, we never actually get any direct presentation of such a context in any scenes.
But logic tells us, if they are as sapient as we are then they probably have all that as well. They already have very close friendships, that some of us would even find hard to tell apart from an actual love relationship, and if the gender ration truly is that unbalanced, it seems realistic that some may take the option of forming a small 'herd' (size 3-4 members, including the stallion as a member).
As to the question 'is it shunt upon in equestria?', if 2 mares love 1 stallion so much that both would rather consider to commit suicide then leave him, but not kill the other mare that's involved to claim him, what else would they do? I doubt Celestia would forbade it, breaking them apart will also cause painful disharmony, especially when it's going as far as to turn either mare desperate enough to commit suicide.
Of course this is a rather extreme case, but it just goes to show that Celestia probably wouldn't forbid them to practice polyamory. And if such a case, or similar in nature, already appeared maybe not once, but twice or more then 3 times, she'd probably already legalized polyamory officially in her kingdom.
Which group of ponies tolerates it in the end and to what extend, is a different story, but I suppose the majority of Ponyville would accept it. Of course it wouldn't be praised and preached like there is no tomorrow, but they'd tolerate it and find it ok none the less.
Canterlot though, with all those nobles, they'd probably not 'officially' appreciate it much.
Come to think of it, although Rarity praises herself a fancy dame, I don't think the element of generosity would be against it either, especially if one of her friends is involved in such a relation (For example if it was a 'size 3' herd like StallionXColgateXFluttershy).
Same actually goes for Applejack and the others of course. Instead they'd be rather supportive and accepting.
Now this is quite true, while I spoke about gender imbalance of 1:3, I highly doubt that all the mane 6 or even 3 of them would fall for the same stallion.
Three mares and one stallion may just hardly pass the 'herd' possibility, making it a complicated "size 4" herd, but everything beyond that seems highly unrealistic.
Because as you said, too many members involved in such a relationship, will result in chaos and disharmony, and while it may be lawfully allowed to form herds of that size, it would be seen as utterly unwise by all parties involved in the relationship to form such a big herd, also because it would be hard to maintain equal affection steadily. Jealousy, greed and overall stress, are bound to destroy herds of that size eventually. The ponies should be wise enough to deduce this in foresight.
1 Stallion and 3 mares could be hardly manageable, but only if all 3 mares are already close friends, just as close as the mane 6.
So yeah, a human that goes to equestria and gets involved with all 6 elements of harmony, unifying them in a herd, that's plain unrealistic, unbelievable and stupid. To much indicates that such a herd can't be maintained unless all mares act significantly out of character.
Phew! *wipes sweat from forehead* sure is interesting to discuss the acceptance of possible polygamy in equestria.
We can't deduce it properly when it's a complete taboo in the television series, thanks to the originally intended demographic.
5022837
I don't agree that there are no hints of it because it's taboo in our society; homosexuality is also taboo to show to children. It's more because My Little Pony fails reverse Bechdel. There are plenty of stories out there where you see, in a cartoon for kids, either a male with two close female friends or a female with two close male friends, where the same-gender friends are friends with each other. Probably actually more common with two guys and a girl, since in the not-written-for-little-girls world of most of Hollywood, men outnumber women in fiction. But think, say, of Buffy, Willow and Xander from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Yes, we're explicitly told that Buffy and Xander have het love interests and that Willow, after a crush on Xander and a brief fling with a boy werewolf, comes out as gay. But if none of them had any explicitly defined sexuality, their close friendship could be reinterpreted as a threesome; the reason we don't do that is Buffy was written for adults and didn't shy away from actual romantic relationships, so we had evidence against it.
The reason MLP doesn't show us this is probably there are so few male characters. Spike is a child and has only one love interest; the other female pony he is strongly associated with is more like family. Discord actually does demonstrate interest in at least two female ponies, because he gets to interact with all of the Mane 6. But most other male characters are in the plot to be the love interest, family member, antagonist, or friend/business acquaintance of one specific mare; we don't see any males who are close friends with more than one of the Mane 6 aside from Spike (and Discord, sort of, for Discord's definition of friendship anyway.)
That being said... I doubt polyamory is either legal or illegal. I suspect that it's extralegal, as it is in our society. No one's going to take anyone to jail for a threesome, but legally, your marriage will only be recognized to one other pony. So a herd might exist and everyone in town knows that on a common law basis, both those mares or all three of those mares are the wives of one stallion, but legally on paper, either none of them are or only one of them is. Whereas gay marriage might well be legal because gay marriage is no more likely to lead to disharmony and exploitation than straight marriage is, and not allowing gay marriage will cause disharmony.
I don't think Rarity would be prejudiced against anyone in a threesome, but her attitudes toward marriage show she's interested in making a socially advantageous marriage with a wealthy stallion who will make her his top priority. That's not a mare looking to join a herd.
And yeah, the notion that all six of them, or in fact more than one of them, would fall in love with the same total stranger who is a member of a different species that none of them have ever seen before, within a short time after his arrival in their lives... that's ridiculous. I could buy one of the mares falling in love with a human if he's a nice guy, but when you have to get over a species barrier, a "I just met you" barrier, and a "Me and my friends don't all have the same tastes in men" barrier... yeah, not happening unless there's OOCness involved.
5022460 That's a good point about a potential viable society in Equestria, even with the gender disparity we've been shown. If a lot of mares are bi, then in modern times the default could be monogamous couples with polyamory surpressed, with mares pairing off with each other if stallions are unavailable, and probably a friendly stallion who "helps out" same sex couples so they have foals of their own. Stable society with population replenishment, though I would worry about the cultural judgement of gay stallions.
Oh, and I really love the part about Zebrica, both that Discord is smart enough to go chill out far away from the only threat on the planet to him, and also a viable reason why he ends up coming back to Equestria (though I do wonder how he would react to changlings. A hive culture, let alone a hive mind, is incredibly orderly, and yet it seems like it would actually be a rather boring target for chaos. Creatures in a hive society lack initiative, so in the face of something like Discord they would essentially shut down while they wait for orders, no matter what he does).
5022925 extralegal huh? Yeah that probably works too.
Still, I'd just say it's hated/looked down on less there than it's here, my excuses being herd mentality, gender imbalance and cultural differences such as religion.
But lets digress.
I also don't get why any authors would do that? I mean for fun yeah okay, comedy and whatnot. I can picture such a circumstance in an overly blown out of proportion clop fic, with heavy comedy included.
But if they wan't a serious story written, where the main character, who is a human, becomes another element anyway, why would they also need to have all the mares fall for him, delusively? I mean I can understand if they had a one night stand at some point, maybe because all got drunk, like a try out you know, big deal nothing gained, forgotten and forgiven still friends in the end, with that kind of outcome.
But serious relationships with all the mares at the same time? While they all are okay with that? Not to mention that every mare has another detail, or the same detail, that makes them utterly fall for him.
That... I don't even... and then they expect their story to be taken seriously? Not even including the comedy tag?
... honestly if there is a story that includes such a harem situation, I'd expect comedy relives none stop, more so I'd expect some kind of plot device responsible for such a predicament, for example a magical potion, that the human accidentally mistook for hair tonic, but then it turns out it was something similar to a 'want it need it' mixture.
Because otherwise, such a situation to evolve naturally, seems surrealistic.
A 'herd' situation of that size practically needs to be overly exaggerated in silliness and extremity to be taken seriously and declared good again.
It also reflects either extreme greed, or utter indecisiveness, by the author.
"Can't favor one mare over the other, so I ship them all with him." yeah that just screams 'silliness'.
Dude... this guy sounds like one of the WORST Gary Stues I've seen in a while, and I've seen A LOT. Down right terrifying.
This is probably my biggest pet peeve when it comes to stories with Discord. Every single time he shows up it's always cotton candy clouds and chocolate rain. As if chaos incarnate would be so predictable.
It bugs me so much that I even wrote a little story poem about it a while ago.
5018796
Dude its 2014....
5024759 I know but, this is set around 2012, when Discord was a bad guy and whatnot.
5024760
Ah. My bad!
While the discussion about the viability of herding relationships as extralegal in Equestrian society is fascinating, my only nitpick is the general assumption of a dearth of stallions. This always irked me, initially because it is, honestly, as stupid as assuming a kid's show for boys depicting overwhelming numbers of males meaning the society shown has a dearth of females, but also because as time went on, more and more male background ponies pop up because the studio bothers to create the models.
Its shown from the female perspective with the focus on female characters, this is to be expected, of course there would be next to no focus on any male characters by comparison. Males in the show are, both figurateively and literally, in the background or in the sidelines of the show. Every Equestrian soldier we have seen is a male, (notable exceptions being the wonderbolts, if we count them as an airforce) construction workers in Cloudsdale were all male, during winter wrap up, all the ponies pulling the snow ploughs were stallions (I'll touch on that in a minute), the private security present in the crystal empire hosting the equestrian games. When we go to cities, Canterlot or Manehatten we see a much more equal distribution of genders both in high class (the nobility) the middle class and bourgeoise (Manehatten both from AJ's reminiscing of how she got her cutie mark and the most recent one) and among commoners when we go back to Ponyville.
Stallions are most often off doing 'generic dude shit' as one analyst put it, completely and utterly irrelevant to the plot and the lives of the Mane 6 and their jobs, if there were a serious dearth of stallions, their overwhelming presence in the royal guard and thus, in danger of loss of life, is wildly irresponsible of the princesses on a sociological level. They're most often off to the side, seen and not heard with the occasional exception because this is a girl's show and thats how shit rolls, boys shows are the same in reverse most of the time. This is not a problem with the society, its our limited, focused perspective. The idea that there is a 3:1 ratio is laughable when considering their social norms.
While Alarajrogers provided a plausible reason why monogomous relationships would still be the norm even if that ratio was accurate, the ratio makes no sense given all the evidence and use of common logic. Look at the foals. in CMC heavy episodes we see that gender disparity is actually equal among the foals, meaning the birth division is roughly equal, unless this generation is an anomaly in that regard, it is safe to assume their birth rates are roughly equal or at least a little biased one way or another like humans are. (In humans, births actually favour males in terms of numbers. However males are more likely to fall ill while young and die through risk taking or violence before reaching an age where they can reproduce, leaving us with a roughly equal population) Hearts and Hooves day EXPLICITELY makes romantic culture an issue between two partners, and has been in Equestrian society since the age of myth, given the story of the prince and princess and the love poison. We have seen parents of Twilight and Rarity, one canterlotian Nobility/Middle class and the other countryside lower/middle class, AJ's Auntie and Uncle, the Cakes, Shining Armour and Cadence. At all levels and social strata of Equestrian society hetero monogamous marriages and romances are the norm.
This is not to say other forms or relationship don't exist, merely that they are not common nor are they neccessarily considered 'normal'. For all we know 'herding' is just as exotic, weird and reviled in Equestrian society as it is in ours, either because of exploitation one way or another, or just merely cultural disgust. Equestria is clearly Matriarchical, but its presented in such a way that lets it be interpreted either as an extreme feminist fantasy of gender equality, or, arguably, only Matriarchical insofar as Victorian England was. In both cases, what is held in highest regard is Harmony, which can be interpreted in any number of ways, all of which can be regarded as unharmonious from another perspective, ('Gay marriage is accepted, dissenting opinions are not' or 'Do what you want but do no harm libertarianism' or 'The rule of the game is we all are the same, a collective regime of peace and love')
But then why the dearth in Ponyville? Well, the simple answer is that ponyville is a farming community. And that there is none.
Hear me out. Remember my spiel about how the males are off in the wings, not to be heard, seen only on occasion? We have seen plenty of evidence of farms around ponyville beyond the Apple family orchards but we only ever see the Apple family's land. And that the marketplace and stalls are mostly dominated by mares? As someone who lived in a farming village myself, this never struck me as unusual, the men were out in the fields while the women handled the storefronts and other economic needs of the town, with exceptions. And from flyover shots, we see that it is not a very big town begin with, meaning stallions with cutie marks or ambitions that cant be fulfilled there will and most likely have either moved away, or spend their days working in nearby towns with different economic makeups more amenable to them, and bring their money home in the evening.
Equestria is a pre-indsutrial (sortof) society that nonetheless has freedom of movement, this is not an unreasonable or even unlikely scenario. This is also why, in real life, mining towns tend to be so flooded with men, grossly outnumbering the women, most of them are actualy transient workers from nearby towns. I actually found it odd why people made a big deal at first about the Ponyville being seemingly dominated by mares, but then I remembered most viewers of this show are city folk not used to seeing such disparity.
An argument could be made, could that I am wrong and being silly because ponies are horses and horses IRL are herd animals with massive disparity in gender ratio and therefore Ponies should be also. Duh.
Except this argument also does not hold water. At all. Using humans as a comparison as ape descendants and social creatures who build communities, while simialrities exist, there is a WORLD of difference between the alpha dominance and even polyamory present in ape social groups and the most basic human tribe. What did the ponies call their more primitive ancestors? Herds? No, they called them tribes and those ancestors showed advance sign of society and politics, notably with the unicorns and their creation of an aristocracy, the pegasi militarist hedgemony and the earth pony burgher aesthetic. I could spend a day and a half drawing comparisons as to how ponies are closer to humans than horses developmentally from what we see in canon alone. From what we see of ponies they are radically different not only in size and shape from horses, possessing large eyes and greater sexual dimorphism, while technically a prey species their eyes are predatory in comparison to real life horses. The fic All American Girl touches upon this and brings up a good point, if an earth Equine were to meet a pony, the first thing its going to notice is the absurdly large predatory eyes of a creature it has never seen before. You can guess how well that'd go down. But what it suggests is interesting when we consider pony diet.
Ponies are omnivorous. Bear with me here. IRL horses are herbivores but are capable of digesting meat, but not for a prolonged period as a substantive diet. Ponies, regularly consume eggs, both on their own, as part of a larger meal or in confections and these do not seem to have the same effect on them as they do on real life equines. Suggesting substantial digestive differences and biochemistry which in conjunction with their predatory eyes means ponies evolved to be omnivorous (or were created that way, depending on the given cosmology and origins and author gives the world in a fic), their bone structures are also much hardier, more forgiving of abuse and more flexible. The wild variety of movements and gestures ponies make and resting poistions (on their back or even Lyra's infamous bench scene) suggest radical differences either in skeletal structure or some other factor. They are also capable of vomiting, more evidence of internal differences, honestly the only reason it seems that they don't eat meat regularly is purely cultural. (Also if you want to factor in mythological influences, Unicorns are predators outright and enjoy eating meat and could require substantial protein because of the strain wielding magic has on their bodies) I am not even going to touch magic or how their altered laws of physics come into play, but the mounting evidences pretty much shows the only thing they seem to have in common with real horses is that both species have a set of four hooves to walk on. Using real horses as a basis for ponies is ill advised at best.
TL;DR: Herding makes no sense without doing some impressive canonical gymnastics,there's plenty of stallions ot go around, also Handyman is a nerd.
5023003
I've read enough stories about Q messing with the Borg to know how this would go down; Discord would mess with the Queen, pretty exclusively, and anything he pulls on the other changelings would largely be for the purpose of annoying the Queen.
That being said my changelings aren't a pure hive mind, not like the Borg. They are much more orderly and controlled than ponies are, but they do have independent intelligence and a sense of "I". It's just, their sense of communal responsibility is much higher than ponies, or humans, such that most of them can't be genuinely happy unless they are devoted to the service of the hive. Still, they would be a lot less fun to play with than ponies would be, because they do have little sense of initiative.
5021608
My Discord's a biological entity, so being able to hurt him isn't hard if you can disrupt his magic, but disrupting his magic is not exactly easy. He does all that stuff with the rolled eyeballs, etc, by having so much magic, he can more or less maintain himself for short periods of time as a magical construct, essentially converting his body to magic so he can make it take any shape he wants it to. Weaken his magic or his connection to it, and he's just another creature like every other creature in Equestria, and he can be hurt.
The thing I find scary about this bozo is not that he can hurt Discord but that he inserted himself into the Elements of Harmony and basically rearranged them to accommodate him. Oh, and that everyone near him falls under a form of mind control where what they think of and what they want comes to correspond to what he wants them to think of and want. Which, yes, is going to make it very, very hard for Discord to fight him.
Discord vs Author Insert Mary Sue.
Love it.
5024928
It's actually the foals that make me believe there is a genuine stallion imbalance. I was counting the kids going on the field trip in Return of Harmony. CMC, bully girls, Twist, Snips and Snails... in other words 6:2, or 3:1. Add Featherweight and it's 6:3, or 2:1. Pipsqueak is younger than the others, not of the same generation, and Button Mash is a background pony who doesn't go to the same school, presumably, or at least is not in the same class.
Either there's a belief among some earth ponies that colts don't need no edumacation, or there are fewer colts than fillies by a large margin. I prefer not to believe in overtly sexist Equestria. And a stallion shortage would have to be a lot steeper than 2:1 to overcome the fact that males are biologically more aggressive and would therefore end up in the Guard more often. (This is, basically, the only difference between the sexes that has been documented in nearly every mammalian species and nearly every human culture. All the other supposed differences fall apart if you look at them hard enough, but males being more aggressive turns up everywhere, so is probably biological.) Because herding is a biological possibility, though plainly not preferred, you could go down to a ratio of 8:1 before you started losing genetic diversity, so 2:1 or 3:1 probably would not result in the attitude that males need to be protected... it would, however, result in the attitude that females don't need to be protected, so males would not try to keep females from engaging in dangerous activities.
I can believe that all the adult stallions are off doing adult stallion things, like being in the Guard or doing heavy farm labor on farms we don't see because they aren't owned by one of our POV characters, but I don't believe that that compensates for the colt shortage. Yes, it's a show for little girls, yes, shows for little boys often have a serious shortage of girls, but often these shortages reflect real-world human sexism (a team of superheroes is likely to have more males than females because more male humans in real life want to be superheroes). When I'm looking at an alien species and all I have to go on is what I see, I'm not going to say to myself "Oh, that's obviously not true because there's a bias in the show creators;" otherwise I could mentally rewrite the entire show into something that makes more sense.
So I think the stallion shortage is probably real, but maybe around a 2:1 and not higher, maybe even as low as 60:40, and it does not result in widespread polyamory. The cultural ideal is still one mare + one stallion, and there are probably a lot of two mare relationships, but not so many of them that that's a huge thing; we see lots and lots of unattached ponies, including their leaders, so it looks to me like the ideal of Friendship supersedes the ideal of Romance, and there's no sense where you are considered a failure if you're not married. A special somepony isn't something every pony will have, and their culture says, that's ok.
All that being said, and back to the topic of this story: the issue of what the gender imbalance actually is, and what bronies think it is, and the difference between them, is a plot point we'll see maybe in the next chapter, one of the things that tipped Discord off to what "Gary" actually is.
5024948 Pretty much, so there's only one creature to harass in the changling hive, and she'd probably just respond with more and more anger, pretty boring.
5026010
Yeah. Chaos depends on complexity and disharmony depends on there being multiple vectors that can be set against each other. Annoy ponies, and they can all have different reactions (complexity = chaos), some of which may rebound negatively against each other (disharmony) to create more unpredictable, complex behavior (chaos). For example, it is very likely that when Rainbow Dash flew off and left her friends to deal with Discord being "sick", this kind of pissed them off. If they were less close friends or they didn't know that when things get serious Rainbow Dash would die for them, this could disrupt their friendship or lead them to react angrily to RD, even though the problem is actually Discord, because she left them behind to deal with it.
When there's essentially only one person having a reaction, the responses are not complex and they don't lead to disharmony, because disharmony requires there to be multiple people having reactions that oppose each other. Even if changelings have their own minds, the fact that they'll all defer to each other or seek guidance from the Queen as to what reaction they ought to have prevents disharmony. On the other hand, Discord discording changelings to reject the hive, now that could produce some glorious chaos. But if it consistently produces fatal levels of chaos and disharmony, because it typically leads to the hive erupting in murderous behavior toward each other, Discord might avoid doing it after he figured out that that's what it does.
5026039 Any hive is an optimized but fragile organization. If Discord messes significantly with the changlings, it would lead to one of two outcomes: The hive breaks down and the changlings starve to death, very much not Discord's style, and also ending all the disharmony changlings cause in other cultures. Or, the changlings survive in a radical new way. However, the 2nd outcome only comes about if Discord was very thoughtful and careful in the changes he made, and planned for contingencies and monitored the results and before you know it, he's the Celestia of the changlings.
I bet if Sombra's fear magic could work on Discord, it would show him something like that, where he's the uncontested ruler of a species so fragile that he must labor constantly yet carefully to keep his subjects alive, or else be left alone.
5025890 Even granted, my foal count was actually based on the Twilight Time, where the ratio appears alot more balanced, (although there were a few foals whose gender I couldn't readily identify)
Does the Element of Protection cover contraceptives?
Oh, chaos above, the dialogue! It's burns us! Girls, what has Gary done to you?
Also, the comment about humans and some sea creatures being the only sapient life on our world makes me want to be very happy, bid you so long, and thank you for all the fish. Then I realized you either forgot about the mice, or it's not a Hitchhiker's guide reference and the sea creatures you are thinking of must be Cthulhu and his friends.
I am beyond envious of this ridiculously clever story idea. I'm also oddly saddened when Discord briefly mentions the tears/not tears dotting his papers. Spot on material.
Heh well you know what, if Discord really knew anything about our world he would be afraid of what humans can really do. We spread out across our entire world, a world that makes the Everfree seem like a city park. Compared to Equestria our Earth is a Death World and we conquered our planet only with sticks and stones. We dont need claws or hooves or magic. Our greatest weapon is our mind.
This video explains it better:
Huh, people love to make Discord say french words for some reason. Oh well, I guess it works.
Either way, loving this story more and more Definitely one of the best Discord impersonations I've seen on this website so far, and your outlook on ponies, humans and especially zebras is great. While I read the rest, I hope you'll be able to come up with great material
5069312
Yeah, Discord should perhaps be scared of buff humans armed with machetes and machineguns. But your average, ordinary Brony sure didn't persistence hunt animals or conquer the wilds of Earth with a stone spear.
We are talking about Discord vs. an unarmed modern human who probably isn't a black belt in any martial arts.
5065767
I'm just sad he left off Parrots. African Grey Parrots are some of the smartest animals on Earth. Much better than apes.