Rhinoceros National Convention
Blue Crescent – Hallways
Bon Bon, Sharp Quill, Haze, and Garnet shuffled down the long white corridor leading away from the meeting room.
"A very passionate speech you gave, Garnet," Haze remarked, drawing a hood over his leafy ears. Fangs flashed from underneath. "Although I feel that some of your... rather polarizing statements on Princess Luna could stand further examination."
Garnet swallowed. "I apologize if I came across as overzealous. Fact is, I truly believe in the initiative of Princess Platinum—"
"Plasma," Sharp Quill corrected.
Garnet winced. "My apologies." He gulped. "My... uh... my timeline. I used to a different princess' legacy."
"It's quite alright, Garnet."
"Is it?" Garnet glanced at the others. "Just how many times have I been calling the leader of Blue Nova Industries 'Princess Platinum?'"
"I've got a better question," Sharp Quill droned. "Who cares?"
"Heh..." Haze smirked from underneath his hood. "Shouldn't we all be taking this situation a bit more seriously? Plasma's gang is talking about restructuring the nature of Equestrian defense. Maybe even the damn government."
"For the better," Garnet said.
"Yeah. Sure. That's easy to believe in and all... but..." Haze sighed. "We're monster hunters. I was never... we were never meant to be responsible for political functions."
"That's why we always operated in secrecy," Sharp Quill said.
"Precisely."
"Then..." Garnet squinted. "If you all feel that way, why did you vote for 'yay' like I did?"
"Because I have faith in Plasma when she says that the vote will be taken to the Canterlot Court next," Haze said. "If this whole procedure is performed officially—and by that I mean through the right channels with the Court and with royalty—then I can live with my conscience."
"You mean you can focus on squashing changelings out in the open," Sharp Quill said.
"Assuming we'll even be allowed to perform lethal force once we're public," Haze remarked with a coy smirk. He spoke over his shoulder. "Isn't that right, Sweetie Drops?"
"Mmmfff..." Bon Bon exhaled, staring down at the throat. "Sure."
Garnet smiled back at her. "We shall... meet up in Ponyville sometime?" He blinked. "To discuss a civilian lifestyle?"
Bon Bon looked up at him. After a blink or two, she gave a delayed response: "Oh. Sure thing, Garnet. Just like I promised—I'll be more than happy to show you the ropes."
"Splendid..." Garnet breathed with relief. "I would very much like to blend in now that I'm stationed here in Central Equestria."
"Yeah, well..." Sharp Quill slapped his glossy shoulder as the rest marched on ahead. "Good luck with that."
Haze chuckled.
Bon Bon lingered at the rear. Just as she passed by a supply room door...
...a thick, wrinkly hoof grabbed her by the tail and yanked her inside.
Blue Crescent – Supply Closet
"Gah!" Gnashing her teeth, Bon Bon batted the hoof away, produced a grappling hook in one hoof—Schiiiiing!—and a taser in the other. Bzzzzzzzt! "Back off, you dirty—" The agent blinked, ears drooping. "...Besty?"
Thud! The rhino in question slammed the door shut and spun to hiss in Bon Bon's face. "Have you gone out of your fuzzy little head?!"
"The Hell's gotten into you?"
Growling, Betsy waved her horn between them. "I thought you had your dad's brains, girl! I thought you cared about the League and Equestria abroad!"
"What?" Bon Bon's brow furrowed. "Is this about the vote we just took—?"
"You've gotta have the skull of a tube worm to think that Princess Platinum's gang is anything but bad news!"
"For one, it's Princess Plasma."
"Whatever—!"
"For another..." Bon Bon took a deep breath. "I'm convinced, alright? If we're gonna go public, we would do best to make peace with Princess Twilight. She's young. She's smart. And if you want a real litmus test for corruption, she's our mare!"
"Bullshit!" Betsy hissed. "You're the closest thing the League ever had to a moral compass! You knew that everything being said at the meeting was sketchy as buck!"
"Betsy..."
"Don't lie to me! I know you!" The rhino's eyes narrowed. "You were mulling it over for a long time. Hell, I'm surprised you even raised your hoof in the end!"
"You think we have a choice in what's going on?" Bon Bon exclaimed.
Betsy blinked at that. "Huh?" She snorted angrily. "Alright... what the Hell do you know that I don't?"
"I know that if there's any nasty hoof to be dealt, then we're not going to sniff the crooks out by letting things stay stagnant." Bon Bon gestured. "Look... this is between you and me, but Chief Agent Horizons suspects that something is fishy with this whole 'Blue Nova' thing."
"No shit..." Betsy shook angrily. "So that's why you were throwing goo-goo eyes at each other before you both voted at the last second!" She stomped her thick hooves. "Rnnngh! We could have had a hung vote, ya melon fudge!"
"Shhhhhh!" Bon Bon dragged Betsy deeper into the closet. "Don't you get it, Betsy?!" She flung a nervous look at the brightly-lit crack in the doorframe. "Something's at work here that's bigger than the League... bigger than the Canterlot Court... bigger than all of us!"
"Then let's blow this joint!"
"To what end?! We've got nothing to prove! Not yet!'
Betsy blinked.
"Okay... so... Horizons is highly dubious of this Garnet fellow," Bon Bon said. "Personally, I think he's a good pony—BUT... he's playing into the hooves of Blue Nova and those in charge of it. You heard that speech he gave at the meeting! He's an out-of-time patriot whom they can manipulate. So... as a favor to Horizons... I'm getting really chummy with him... trying to find out just what the new League wants to do with him." She swallowed. "In the meantime... we're letting this whole movement go their way..."
"So they can expose themselves to our scrupulous eyes..."
"Exactly..."
"That sounds unnecessarily stupid, convoluted, and downright dangerous." Betsy blinked. "Damn... I think I'm getting turned on already..."
"You understand now?"
"Then... shit..." Betsy sneered. "I should have played along too! Dammit! Girl, why didn't you tell me before—"
"Shhhhh..." Bon Bon grasped Betsy's leathery shoulders. "No, Betsy. You gotta be you... now more than ever..."
"Uhhhhhhhhh... you sure?"
"Just as much as Horizons is relying on me to play the innocent little daughter-of-a-chief, you gotta keep up with the whole 'fat grumpy loose trigger' thing."
"Hey." Betsy frowned. "I'm not 'grumpy.'"
"You know what I mean..."
Betsy sighed. "When I got into the spy business, I thought it was gonna be the head-butting and explosions kind... none of that debonair deception shit."
"Things change. Equestria definitely is. Looks like Blue Nova wants to change along with it. But perhaps it's too early for a change of this kind?"
"How do I know?"
"That's just it. You don't. Neither do I. But—like it or not—we're both in the exact time and place that matters." Bon Bon took a deep breath. "We gotta play along... at least until more clues surface."
"And then what?"
"What else?" Bon Bon stood up straight. "We bring the real monsters of Equestria to justice... whoever that might end up being."
Betsy nodded. "Yeah... okay... I can buy that."
"Good. So..." Bon Bon raised an eyebrow. "...could you maybe not yank me randomly into dark supply closets? It could arouse suspicion."
"Knowing who you lived with in Ponyville, I figured you were comfortable with closets."
"... ... ...huh?"
"Oh Sweetie Drops..." Betsy opened the door, looked out into the hallway, then made a stealthy exit. "...if only you were all smarts."
Bon Bon lingered by herself inside the compartment. Alone.
Her muzzle scrunched. "We're just friends, dammit..." She rubbed her muzzle, sighing. "And right about now... I could really use some friendship and a tall glass of cider..."
She eventually made a limp exit herself.
Stats
Page generated in 0.035 seconds
Total duration
1,078 users online
2,172,061 hits today, 2,571,732 yesterday
FIMFiction
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
Designed and coded by knighty & Xaquseg - © 2011-2024
Follow & Support Us
Support us
SubStar
Chat!
Discord
Follow us
Twitter
MLP: Friendship is Magic® - © 2024 Hasbro Inc.®
Fimfiction is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Hasbro Inc.®
Skirts, just...
Change the description of the story. Make it about SMILE and corruption in Equestria. Hell, change the title.
You have officially made your front-loaded backstory more legitimately interesting than the story you actually promised at the offset. I cannot seriously imagine that straightforward superhero antics will feel anything other than tacked on when they finally happen, because there's no way they'll mesh with this story as it is.
7538395
The whole point is to build the universe that the Shell comes into... it's just gonna take a while.
Politics sure must be interesting when Betsy votes back home; all those rhinos keep electing donkeys as Prime Minister...
7538448 Yeah, I know what the point is. And it's worked too well.
The universe is more interesting than the hero at this point, and I don't see any way that the Shell will manage to be as interesting as this complex political game the other characters are playing.
Not to mention that the idea of spending several hundred thousand words doing set-up remains one of the most ridiculous ways I've ever seen of writing a story.
7538472 Skirts is actually George RR Martins alt, so this is par the course.
Rhinos feel sweet only in the closet, when horny?
7538477 Wow.
I mean, there's author favoritism, and then there's... wow.
Even if that's a joke, that comparison is just... No.
The difference between this story and every other Skirts story:
In Austraeoh, Rainbow Dash flies east. It takes an insanely long time to find out why, or what she does, or a great many other things, but when the first chapter was posted, one thing was clear: Rainbow Dash was flying east. And she did.
In The Things Tavi Says, the first chapter stars Vinyl and Octavia freely participating in a slow, casual slice-of-life scene, which sets the pacing of the story. The only unanswered question is how Octavia saved Vinyl's life, but the characters are so engaging that the central question quickly becomes background noise, and just subtly adds a layer of suspense to every time things change.
In Background Pony, the first chapter allows us to experience Lyra's curse and the effect she has on the world around her. No questions are left, except the question of if she'll ever beat it.
In Shellstrings, we learn about the origin of SMILE, the changelings and the television before we meet the protagonist. "The day-to-day adventures of the Shell" have not happened yet. The question on our mind isn't "How will the Shell get out of this latest predicament", but instead "What place does a superhero have in a world of spies and politics?"
We got a prequel before we knew if there were any unanswered questions in the first book.
7538491
Well, it is nice to have a story that explores the world a bit... but this story has gone so far off course that we got lost in Afghanistan looking for the wheaties in the grocery store.
7538620 I agree. There's nothing wrong with world-building, but it does generally happen after the protagonist is introduced.
I'm rather liking this story.
It's complex, like life in the real world. Sure, it pandered to the worn-out "Corrupt Corporation" meme... but hey, is there any author in Fimfiction.net who would write it any differently? Face it--most of the world is already brain-washed about that.
Oh shit, i think Betsy might be evil or something, when she said Princess Platinum like garnet instead of plasma............ suddely i am much more suspicious of the rhino ............hmmmmmmm
I'm still suspicious of Betsy here for the same reasons I was in the first place. Bon Bon brings up so many good points they just have nothing to really go on here and they do need to feel out what is happening gathering evidence along the way. It just sad that the only way to do that is to play the game that has been set up for them.
7538395
I'm sorry I have read enough comics to know that it can mesh together pretty dang well, heck you can really argue in a way that is exactly what the James Bond movies are as well; I mean come on in the older ones he's basically just an action/super hero who does spy stuff. Heck Captain America: Winter Soldier was a spy thriller with Superheroes stuff in it and it worked amazingly. While I will agree, as much as I like this story, that he overly front loaded it with way too much stuff I think it will easily come together in the end.
Oh, the horror, they might actually be forced to capture changelings instead of murdering them outright. How will they cope with such a horrible change?
... I'm suspicious of Betsy now, due to that slip.
This makes me miss This Platinum Crown.
Yeah, rhinos aren't exactly the most covert species out there. At least, that's what they want the rest of us to think...
Still, hard to tell just what to think here. Not enough pieces of the puzzle, and I'm not even sure what the picture is.
7538395
Honestly, I'd find it hilarious if Lyra blundering about managed to upset every political house of cards in ways nopony could've foreseen. Seeing ponies scramble to react to her, try to anticipate her, and guess at her agenda could be vastly entertaining.
Probably not what's going to happen, but I'd love it if it did.
7538472
This just tends to be Skirts' M.O. with these incredibly long, daily-updating fics. You'd be hard pressed to find any legitimate critic that would call this a good writing style, but it somehow works.
Take The Things Tavi says for example, it started out very slow paced with roughly the first 1/2-3/4 of the fic exploring the main characters. Traditional thinking would suggest that most of the side stories and fluff could be cut out in order to drive at the main conflict earlier but I think that the story would have ended up suffering without that degree of character building. Since these fics do go against the grain of what's considered traditionally acceptable it makes them incredibly hard to judge until they're actually finished, personally I didn't get very invested The Things Tavi Says until Octavia ended up in the hospital.
I think I've just come to accept that following these types of fics is a bit like watching Bob Ross paint. In the beginning I'm usually thinking: "Bob, what are you doing? There are enough friggin' trees already!" but then the piece always comes out great and I realize I should have just sat back, relaxed, and watched the artist do his thing.
Bon Bon stopping Betsy from coming out to SMILE
Interesting, so SMILE was a covert ops group using lethal force to take down threats and want to continue doing that. I wonder how well that went when the Princesses were informed.
7538395
Agreed. I like this whole corruption in Equestria plotline and feel that Skirts has got enough here to easily build an entire story without the superhero bits. A change in description would be a welcome thing to clarify just what someone's walking into.
7538448
That's King's point, this story is essentially the worldbuilding portion of that universe and the description should reflect this. Let Shellstrings be a sequel to this story once the world is ready for it to exist in.
7538543
Also agreed, this is quite the departure from Skirts' (and your usual fimfic) story writing style. I wonder if this has become a 'well we're too deep to turn back now' kind of situation for Skirts or if he genuinely believes that this departure from the usual is for the best. Either way, this story will be made or broken depending on how well the actual superhero part is done.
7541248 There is a difference between taking an incredibly long time to reach the conclusion of a story and taking an incredibly long time to actually start the story. If this were Skirts' usual M.O., we would have spent half of The Things Tavi Says from DJ Capricorn's perspective.
Yes, Skirts always takes a long time to get anywhere. But they usually start somewhere that's recognizable as the story promised in the description.
7542047 Thank you.
7542680
It's funny you mention this, the first half of the second book in the Austraeoh series starts out from the perspective of a completely unknown pony, leaving the readers with no idea what's going on or where Rainbow Dash is.
Even that's not as odd though as a a 1,000 chapter ship fic that STILL hasn't gotten to the shipping or a 210,000 word story that never gives any solid exposition. Maybe it's just me, but this story doesn't seem all that abnormal when compared to some of the other crazy things Skirts has made work.
7543151 I am under the impression that Appledashery is mainly concerned with RD's anxiety over whether or not to initiate the titular ship. While certainly uncommon in conventional shipfics, many romance stories do spend a significant portion of the first act with the main character waffling over whether or not to even start the romance. In fact, Appledashery has technically already been outdone by Peanuts, which took 54 years for Charlie Brown to even talk to his potential love interest. In that way, the story has actually stayed on topic all this time, and its description is entirely truthful.
I am most certainly not qualified to criticize any aspect of Austraeoh, as I have not read it, so I must confess that I can neither use that to support or deny my argument. However, you mention it is the first half of the second book. A protagonist change between books of a normal series is entirely possible and in some cases expected. It also means there was an entire preceding book that (theoretically) set the stage, so the reader is more inclined to be patient and see where the author is going.
Both of these examples, at least from my perspective, fail to set a reasonable precedent for what is happening with Shellstrings. Literally one line of this story's description alludes to any characters who are not Lyra and Chrysalis, and that is "the heroes and villains attached to [the Shell]". By contrast, the two examples you have cited have downright spartan descriptions, and although their enclosed narratives are extensive and bordering on insane, at least they tell the story you think you're going to get.
(At this point, I'd like to thank you for remaining so level-headed and conversational thus far, and apologize if I have come across as overtly aggressive towards you. It has not been my intent, and I for one am thoroughly enjoying this back-and-forth.)
7543216
Personally, I don't have any major qualms with the description but I do see where some of you guys are coming from and I think you've hit on the major problem. Most of Skirts' other insanely long stories usually have fairly vague descriptions so the reader isn't predisposed to have any specific expectations of the fic while the initial long build up takes place. When the author mentions things like superheroes and Chrysalis and Lyra sparking fear in the minds of evil a reader is inclined to believe that this will play out more like a comic book, jumping straight into the action than the long novel that it will probably end up being.
I don't believe that we'll get a different story than what's advertised, I just think that it will take awhile for it to all come together. Already most events are directly relatable to Lyra: a new hero rising up spits in the face of the ponies in charge of Blue Nova. The argument that Equestria needs more protection than just the princesses is completely irrelevant if there's another crime fighter around. This will likely result in them asking S.M.I.L.E. to capture Lyra on the basis that one individual cannot wield that much power safely, leading to Bonbon having doubts about Lyra since she hasn't exactly been the most stable pony around. Flash is likely to be conflicted about trying to exact vengeance upon Chrysalis for his parents when she's actively trying to do some good in the world.
tl;dr: I think a superhero story will eventually fit together fairly well without losing any of the complexity and intrigue that's been built up, it might just take a while to get there.
And there's no need to apologize for anything, I don't mind a decent debate even if it does seem that we're at an impasse. (and for the record I'm not one of the people jumping on the downvote train, that kind of thing irks me when the other person is expressing criticism reasonably.)
That is an interesting slip there Betsy.
Also
Might