• Member Since 11th Oct, 2013
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alarajrogers


Okay, I admit it, I'm probably not your mom. But odds are I'm old enough to be. Now with Patreon account (under alarajrogers) and short stories on Amazon (under Alara Rogers).

T
Source

Discord's the only creature in Equestria who can recognize the human for what he is -- not the long-lost Seventh Element that never actually existed and couldn't have existed before the human arrived, but a meta-reality warper, an entity far more powerful than Discord with the power to warp the minds of all around him and the very rules of magic to make sure that he's always the Big Hero. And the role the human's assigned to Discord is the Villain to beat down or kill.

Pre-reform Discord's fine with being the villain. But on his own terms. Not dancing on some alien interloper's puppet strings.

Without friendship, or even allies, Discord's going to have to find a way to defeat a creature who can alter fate itself and who can even mind-control him. Or he may just end up worse than dead.

Art by Tenchi-Outsuno. Progress Bar at my writing journal.

Trigger warnings: Mind control (magically induced love, magically induced friendship, magically induced stupidity, Discord being Discord), noncon/dubcon (magically induced love, other forms of highly dubious consent), rape (female on male), violence/gore (mostly against Discord), literally everything in chapters 19-21, humans not being presented as unilaterally wonderful and superior to ponies and/or draconequui.

Chapters (26)
Comments ( 2481 )

I am thrilled that you are writing this! I actually expect that it might get quite dark, but then it might have to: such are the murky passages of the human mind, especially the mind of the puppetmaster/Gary Stu.

Oh, and from what you've written so far, it's already gotten quite dark. I'm guessing the eight Ponies Gary Stu's made his love slaves are Celestia, Luna and the Mane Six.

And yeah, even though the Season 2-3 Spike wasn't as powerful as he gets by Season 4, forgetting about Spike, who must have very good reason to hate Gary, the most obvious being Gary's treatment of Twilight and Rarity, was a major error on Gary's part. Spike is canonically a tough little Dragon. And smart, too.

Had to take some time off from judging the Writeoffs to read this. Definitely looking forward to the guerrilla psychological warfare. :pinkiehappy:

5009428
Spike's feelings about "Gary" (probably not his actual name, though Discord may call him that mockingly) are complicated, because Spike is no better than anyone else at telling that Gary is warping the universe. From his perspective, Twilight and all of her close friends fell in love with Gary, who is naturally completely awesome and well deserves such affection, and the Princesses adore him as well, though if that relationship has a sexual aspect Spike wouldn't know about it. So he's jealous, and sad, and lonely, and his self-esteem is in the toilet, because Gary is the most awesome creature ever but Gary isn't paying any attention to him, and Rarity is in love with Gary, and everything Twilight talks about pertains to Gary. But he doesn't hate Gary.

Yet.

He does hate Discord, and he does know that Discord twists things and tries to turn friends against each other. So it will not be a simple matter for Discord to convince him of the truth about Gary. But Discord's story is going to be very, very attractive to him, because if Discord is telling the truth, then Gary is not an incredibly awesome and wonderful guy that Spike can never hope to be like who ignores Spike and has taken the attention of all the ponies he cares about; Gary's a villain, and Twilight, Rarity and the others haven't really lost interest in Spike, they're under mind control. Unlike the problem of hopelessly never being as awesome as Gary, the problem of Gary is a mind controlling villain is one Spike can at least imagine being able to solve.

5009611

Spike's feelings about "Gary" (probably not his actual name, though Discord may call him that mockingly) are complicated, because Spike is no better than anyone else at telling that Gary is warping the universe.

Right. I figured that "Gary's" power includes an "everything's all right, nothing to disapprove of here" field effect, because that's a necessary ability to prevent everypony else in Equestria from going "Hold on, what's happening here?" when they see both Princesses and the Mane Six fawning disgustingly over this alien creature.

But if "Gary" didn't make Spike specifically enthralled by him as well, then that general effect might not stand up to a strongly opposed will. Obviously, that's not enough in of itself, because "Gary's" power must be pretty awesome to overcome Celestia, Luna, Twilight, and Fluttershy -- and risk overcoming Discord -- in the fashion that it obviously does.

From his perspective, Twilight and all of her close friends fell in love with Gary, who is naturally completely awesome and well deserves such affection, and the Princesses adore him as well, though if that relationship has a sexual aspect Spike wouldn't know about it.

Mmm, he might suspect, though, because normally Spike spends most of his time around Twilight, and most of the rest of his time around Rarity. Of course, if it does, that would make him feel even worse, and in some fairly complex ways given that he also has to believe that "Gary" is really super cool.

This idea greatly intrigues me and I'd love to see more. As a Spike fan I'd add my two cents, but I can't think of anything that hasn't been said just yet.

The trouble with a Gary Stu deconstruction is that it still has a Gary Stu in it. It's like a story about colon cancer: even if there is a cure at the finish, there's a lot of ass cancer to get through. I applaud the concept, but I'm not sure if I can continue reading.

Ooh, I'm liking the start of this. I'm a little iffy on the format (journal-type formats have always been a questionable standpoint in my personal opinion as they limit the perspectives that one can view events from), but as far as the setup of the actual narrative itself, spot on! I can't wait to read more!

5010133

:rainbowhuh: But... he's not even the main character and is very plainly set up as the villain from the story's perspective. Not an "uber awesome hero who everybody will love."

Interesting! This is really good, but sadly for Discord, I don't see him winning. He may beat Gary, but if he does he'll get turned to stone, or if Gary's magic has a lasting effect, the Main Six could avenge their 'lover' by killing Discord.

I must ask, how dark will this get? EoO was about the darkest I'm willing to go... ( What happened to finishing some other stories first?:duck: :rainbowwild: I'm only messing with you at this point! :pinkiehappy:)

I love this already! Those "Seventh Element" and HiE stories drive me nuts- I don't even read stories with an OC tag because they are, invariably, Mary/Gary-Stus. Discord had so better win!

5010597
This is a different kind of dark than Elements of Opposition, so I'm not entirely sure how to compare it. No one gets tied up and tortured, and ponies under the influence of a love spell don't perceive themselves as being sexually abused even if they are from an outsider's point of view, and Gary thinks he's a hero so he won't voluntarily do anything bad to anyone who isn't a "villain" in his mind. However, he's willing to do damn near anything to a villain except rape or captivity-torture-mindbreak. And our "hero" is willing to sink to much greater depths to win than, say, the Mane 6 would be.

I'll give you this spoiler for free: none of the Mane 6 will die, nor Spike. Can't make promises about Discord, the princesses, or Gary himself -- not saying any of them are likely to die, but I don't know how this ends yet. I know what Discord will need to do to win, but I don't know how he gets there or what happens after that. So I can't actually predict exactly what's going to happen yet. But I'm pretty much guaranteed to never kill the Mane 6 or Spike unless their deaths are part of the point of the story, and this is not a story about death, so all seven of them will be alive at the end.

5010133

I like seeing how horrible it would be on the receiving end, so I think this is a good story idea.

I did something on a related concept in An Epistolary Legal Consultation Between Princesses, which is essentially about just how little the Ponies would like the Jerkass Everyman This Loser Is You type self-insertion character, especially when they took their whiny self-entitled amoral Homelander attitudes to a civilization based on Love and Friendship. Charlie Yu has no reality-warping powers, he's just a dumb jerk who can't control his own sex drive and is at first far too obnoxious to find anypony willing to have sex with him -- then behaves cruelly when ... but that's the story. And I should finish that story sometime.

What Alara's obviously doing here is parodying the kind of story where the Human in Equestria quickly masters everything in his environment, has everypony fall in love with him for no reason adequately explainable by character or plot, and soon finds the entire world centering around his existence for no very good reason. One feature of such stories, of course, is that anyone who opposes him for any reason turns out to be a jerk, canon jerks become minor villains, minor villains major villains, and a genuine major villain like Discord Infinite Cosmic Evil which must suffer the most horribly humiliating beat-down in the history of beat-downs.

A lot of those stories also miss subtleties (such as the fact that Discord actually isn't Pure Evil but is more like an amoral jerk with awesome power -- really, a lot like the Gary Stu except that the world doesn't actually revolve around him, so he has more of a sense of proportion. And they usually ignore any aspects of the canon heroes personalties that might get in the way of them all admiring and loving the Gary Stu. Not necessarily cause them to hate him -- just give them motives distracting them from total worship.

First, a few quips, because sad, frightened Discord is surprisingly upsetting and I need a few laughs to rinse out my mental palate:

Lord Sovereign Designated Driver of Equestria

A title he held for all of two hours before he got bored and changed it, I'm sure.

Well, possibly she can't remove her head and turn it into a balloon. I've never seen a unicorn, or even an alicorn, pull that one off.

Pinkie Pie did manage the latter, which I think nicely explains why she is what she is in my stories. :pinkiecrazy:

I have a goatee, not a mustache!

Doesn't that mean that Discord is an evil twin? (cf. evil Riker removing facial hair.)

In any case, I'm am immensely intrigued. I haven't even met the Gary Stu yet, and I'm already glad he isn't in any of my instances of Equestria. Looking forward to Discord fighting like a Discworld character.

5011067

First, a few quips, because sad, frightened Discord is surprisingly upsetting, and I need a few laughs to rinse out my mental palate

This is actually why I go to the epistolary/journaling format every time I have to deal with a sad, frightened Discord, at least to begin with. Discord In Hell and the prologue of No Escape From Yourself were things I felt I had to write in Discord's voice, because if I was in third person, there would not be nearly so many jokes being cracked. You can count on Discord to at least try to be funny no matter how awful his circumstances are.

(Also I got a lot of experience with the format writing Q first person in a prompt community. Q and Discord aren't identical -- even in my universe where they're the same guy, Discord's more giddy and silly when he's Discord than when he's openly being Q, because he matches the tone of his environment -- but they're damn close.)

I have a hard time doing straight first person for either Q or Discord; it's always a journal or letter because they feel like whenever they talk, they're explicitly performing for an audience, so I can't do the kind of basic first person narration where "I" tells the story with no consciousness of "you" reading it.

Good satire. Have you read this story? That's the first thing I thought of after reading the description.

Fun premise ! And a well written first chapter. Looking forward to where you go with this.

CCC

You know... this first chapter by itself makes for a fairly chilling one-shot, since if complete, it would imply that Discord didn't return to write more.

But I see it's not complete, so I'm very interested to see just how Discord fights back against a creature that even he can't take on directly...

5011710
It's true, and I actually thought twice about posting it with just one chapter because of that, but I figured the incomplete tag would take care of that.

I hate Gary Stus. I'd never write a story where the Gary Stu won. :-)

5010264

Yes, but everyone is brainwashed into acting as if he is, and reality is warped to make events go that way. It's not like I don't wish a fiery death for Gary Stus which are "really" heroic, so why should I not loathe this one? (Mind control and brainwashing are quite triggery things for me).

5012003
You should loathe this one. The difference between a story like this and a straight Gary Stu is that in this story you're supposed to loathe the Stu.

But if mind control is triggering for you, you're gonna want to get out. We've got a villain who unconsciously brainwashes everyone into doing what he thinks they ought to be doing, and a "hero" (protagonist, at least) who has mind alteration abilities as one of his signature talents and won't shy from using it if he thinks it'll help, so that sounds like a recipe for a lot of mind control stuff. Discord hasn't reformed yet so he has no motive not to use his own abilities in that regard. So this probably isn't a good story for you to read just for that reason.

5012027

Yeah, the notion of someone being mind-controlled into doing something they would normally find deeply wrong or repulsive, and controlled to the extent of being entirely cool with it, is definitely disturbing to me. You do very good Discord fiction, so I'm sorry to duck out, but I am probably going to do so.

Two Questions = Is this Last Draconequus backstory? And is the Gary Stu a Brony Gary Stu or from a world with no MLP?
Besides that, this is great! But please work on one of your older stories before completing this one

5012541
Hey, I've got 5600 words of King Who Would Be Man's next chapter ready; prob another 2-3K to finish the chapter and publish. :-)

Yes, this uses Last Draconequus backstory, because unless I actually need a different backstory to make my plot work, I'll pretty much always just default to that. And yes, the Gary is a brony. It wouldn't really be true to the worst excesses of the trope for him not to be.

Very interesting. I find it particularly intriguing that the Gary Stu doesn't know what he is, which seems to me to indicate that the real enemy isn't Gary, it's Gary's author, for whom Gary is the insert. I wonder if Discord would be able to reach Pinkie Pie, her 4th Wall Breaking powers might be relevant here. And Discord's right, Gary is way worse than him, even if it's unintentional, but I do hope if he wins this he gains some perspective on the way he treats ponies.

Do you know I counted no less than 27 reforming spells in the spellbooks held in the library in Ponyville? Either your great and noble librarian heroine has a bit of a fetish there, or ponies think mind control is just good clean fun as long as the end result is harmonious.

Nothing but Net alarajrogers!

I love your list of Discordian-era enemies and how the big guy dealt with them. You know why Tirek and Scorpan are brothers but look so completely different? You know what happened to the rest of their race? You know what happened to the rest of the cities in the Crystal Empire? You know what happened to all those witches? You know who has one lion thumb, one eagle claw and likes snapping them both? THIS GUY!

5014747
I don't intend to have any explicit breaking of the fourth wall; even though this is kind of a metastory about fictional characters being aware of some of the mechanics of the fiction they're in, I'm sticking quite strictly to conceptually framing it as a warping of the nature of reality. Gary's author is not accessible (strictly speaking, how could he be? He's fictional too; I'm the actual author. :-))

My personal favorite was the zompony apocalypse. "Okay, that one was my fault in the first place." What was Discord doing to trigger a zompony apocalypse and exactly what did he do about it? I'm pretty sure I have no idea. :-)

5014759 j'accuse! I knew you were the real villain all along, author! :pinkiegasp:

Honestly Discord causing the zompony apocalypse doesn't surprise me in the least. He hates to see his toys die, and if some favorite pony who got really hilariously angry at having her mane turned into whipped cream :raritydespair: died, he's not going to tolerate the Grim Reaper taking his ponies like a chump! In fact, why not give ol' whip cream mane the ability to share her gift with others!

The hard part would be fixing it without killing a bunch of ponies (and yes, if he created the zompony curse, then anypony who dies he has their blood on his claws).

I always love a good parody, so this definitely intrigues me. One question though:

Set after Return of Harmony but before Keep Calm and Flutter On, so Discord has not reformed.

So shouldn't Discord still be a statue? Or are you going to explain that at some point?

5014571 what seasons has he watched. Because if he saw discord in season 3, I don't think he would kill him (I know I wouldn't)

5015503
"But Discord is a VILLAIN! Discord is totally evil! They ruined him with that episode because chaos is evil and can't possibly reform! They should never have tried to reform him! But it's okay to try to reform Nightmare Moon because she's hot."

You obviously have not seen the number of negative brony opinions about Discord that I have.

5015455
Yes, that will be explained in the next chapter, but what it boils down to is, you can't be a Big Hero and save sexy girls from an Evul Villain if said evil villain doesn't get out of prison and start wreaking havoc.

Discord owes his freedom to Gary, but it's kind of like the freedom of a quail being released from its cage into a shooting range to be hunted.

This looks GOOD!
I dislike all stories that have a Gary Stu character, But this looks fun!

I think I like your discord as well. He is a villain, he has loose morals, and he is not gonna let someone change who he is. Another thing though! Discord is not just determined or angry, he is scared, that shows depth in emotion to him. but the way it's portrayed you don't lose that silly nature of him.

This story gets a thumbs up as I patiently await more!

Heh I wonder if Gary would say to Discord something to the effect of, "Freedom? You never had any freedom to begin with. You all are nothing more than fictional characters I can do whatever I want to. You never had any free will at all, you were always being controlled by someone."

While I'm not sure if I'd like a story like this told entirely in journal format (not to assume you will; I have no idea what your plans are for future chapters), I will say that your writing is strongest in the journal format. It lacks a lot of the elements I've previously critiqued you for in your third-person narratives.

I was kind of worried about how this story would turn out from your blogs, it being a reactionary fix-fic and my generally not liking those... but this seems pretty good so far. Hell, I'm interested. Let's see where it goes.

Dragons invading and taking ponies for food? Note the lack of a Dragon Empire any longer!

Didn't Discord fight the dragons as a favour for Celestia before he went mad and took over Equestria? You said this used the Last Draconequus backstory, but if so, you've got a continuity error there, because this is phrased like it's something Discord did while he was in charge.

5017387
He's Discord! He remembers things the way he wants to. It's more fun that way!

No, seriously, he technically did not destroy the Dragon Empire until he was in charge... did them a lot of damage, but the actual shattering them into total anarchy happened after he thought they'd killed Celestia and Luna. But, that being said, Discord will never admit that he used to serve Celestia any more than she will admit that he was her lover, so even if he had done it at her command, if he wants to talk about it because it makes a funny joke he's still going to say he did it.

I suspect the difference between the journal format and the other stories is that things like the constant little asides belong in a journal format, at least as spoken by someone like Discord. A journal kept by Twilight would be very different. And I can't delve as much into emotional states in something someone is supposed to be writing; it has a level of detachment that real-time narration doesn't.

Keeping it in journal format has some serious negatives -- nothing happens in real time, so if you see a climactic battle, it's because someone survived it to write about it -- but switching has negatives too. I did it with "No Escape From Yourself" because Discord is a completely unreliable narrator there, his worldview turned so dark from guilt and depression that he does things like completely forget all the overtures of friendship Pinkie Pie has extended him, and I wanted to be able to compare his journal to what's really happening. But here, Discord would make a more reliable narrator than anyone else in the story.

5016845
You're giving Gary way too much credit. Gary does not know that he is, in effect, the author of a story. (This isn't a pure metafiction. Gary isn't literally an avatar of an author, Gary is a guy who can rewrite reality as if he were the writer of a story. He's also not named Gary.) There are going to be some slightly metafictional elements, given that Gary is a brony (and some other parts to it we'll find out when we learn Gary's name), but for the most part, this is not a metafiction and Gary is clueless. He literally has no idea he's doing this.

5017575

I suspect the difference between the journal format and the other stories is that things like the constant little asides belong in a journal format, at least as spoken by someone like Discord.

Precisely. When done in this format, your usual style is perfectly in keeping with convention, and even serves to add to Discord's character in a way congruent with both what we've seen of him in canon and what we've seen of him in your other fics. It's only when you do the same thing in third person that I have a problem with it.

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! :twistnerd:

This is really good. What's the count....Second Chapter!? Well this is definitely becoming a favorite. Update soon!

CCC

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.

CCC

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...

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