Set during the Age of Wonders, at the world's first Five Tribes Cultural Exchange. Two musicians become friends. Before one lost her voice, and another lost her heart. Purely a friendly slice of life story written in a day. This was done just as a simple character driven story composed of one scene and only two character.
We have Adagio of Rainbow Rocks, and Melody of My Little Pony Tales.
This ties in with the Pony POV Verse, but I like to think it should be enjoyable for everyone.
Trope page: tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php… (SERIOUSLY need to be kept up to date, every little bit helps!). . . . It makes me happy.
PLEASE check out the ton of recursive fanfics of this fanfiction series. A lot of heart went into them! They also answer a lot of unaswered questions. mlp-pony-pov-series.deviantart… For heaven sake they rock! Kendell2 and Oracle Mask and Richforce and Ardashir and Jawmax and Persona22 and Dragon of Twilight and ItsFromPeople and all the rest!!! Please?
Lyrics modified as a personal favor to me by Kendell2.
MLP Copyright Hasbro
Cover art by siansaar
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And? That's all you have to say?
That's beautiful ... and sad, in retrospect.
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How so?
I wanted to see what I could do with one scene and two characters.
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It's beautiful watching two very extroverted, aggressive characters (and I remember that Melody was majorly like that in My Little Pony Tales, you're getting her personality absolutely correct given that she's now a mare full-grown instead of a teenaged filly) managing to find their commonality and connect like that. It's sad because we know what's going to happen to them ... that Melody will suffer in the Cataclysm, and Adagio will be warped and corrupted into a monster.
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There's also the fact they're from different cultures where even concepts like family and matrimony aren't exactly the same. I really wanted to write them as verbally sparring rather than verbally brawling (there is a big difference between those two things), each one giving themselves a compliment disguised as a compliment to the other. And both managing as you said to find their common ground.
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Yes. I like the idea of the Sea Ponies having a rather alien culture; that's one of the things that Sev (of Letters From the Front Storm Front the Pegasus fame) did right with his Kelpies (*), and that Ask Ipsy Witch does with the Deep Ponies. For that matter, the G1 Sea Ponies act pretty bizarre -- silly rather than scary bizarre, but then they had an explicit pact with the Ponies of Dream Valley. They're basically okay guys in all three cases -- but one can't make the same cultural assumptions one might make with the Three Kinds. The seas are vast and deep and mysterious, so it only makes sense that so can be the Sea Ponies in the view of the other Kinds.
I do something similar with my Changelings. They're not inherently evil, but they don't entirely lose their creepy-pathetic nature in the eyes of the other Pony Kinds after the Reconciliation -- the "bug-ponies" still lack what other Kinds would consider normal emotional affect, engage in social practices repulsive to them, and most fundamentally, a lot of the emotional affect the Changelings do have is utterly missed by normal Ponies, who lack empathic senses or responsiveness to Changeling pheromones. Only a Pony who has immersed himself in Changeling culture for years (such as Landscape Carrot) can truly understand them and realize that they actually have similar emotions to the other Kinds in many regards.
Mind you, the Sea Ponies and the Changelings also have a lot of problems understanding the Three Kinds. But most stories are from the Three Kinds' points of view.
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(of Letters From the Front Storm Front the Pegasus fame) did right with his Kelpies (*),
You mention the villain sue spawn?
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Oh no, Sev's Kelpies made a lot more sense than the IDW Comics variety. They had one Alicorn-level ruler, who was powerful but not absurdly overpowered, and they lived in and around a mobile undersea city left over from some ancient event on the scale of the Cataclysm. They wound up first in conflict with and finally allying with the Ponies of Equestria against an extra-terrestrial invader. It was an epic tale.
Most of the Kelpies were essentially like your Sea Ponies: streamlined and gilled for life in the water, with magical hydrokinesis. They may or may not have had the acoustic magic. Of course, Sev was basing it off G1, as did you, and all of this originally bases off the legends of Water Horses, Kelpies, Selkies, Sirens and Merfolk. As did, actually, Lovecraft's The Shadow Over Innsmouth, the source for the Deep Ponies.
This is also the story from which I borrowed Princess Celestia's Seraglio. Of course, this being the same continuity as Letters From the Front, I'm pretty sure that the huge ornate bath house got more use than it did in my fanon. Celestia really should use it for something, but first she'd have to do something about the interior decor. One of the few things that can embarrass her is having somepony see it -- the original artists are centuries safely dead (of natural causes) and gone.
I am probably going to write a scene where Princess Luna discovers the structure ...
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Never heard of Letters from the Front, I read 'Letters from the front line' which had many plot holes, but was still VERY disturbing, having the mane six reduced to front line grunts in a Vietnam style war with the changelings. (Pinkie is drugged up to be a cheerful pyromaniac, RD treats killing changelings like scoring points in a video game, Twilight is outright suicidal, Fluttershy is tramatized from all the horrors she's seen as a medic, AJ doesn't care if she's blowing up changelings or rock (it's all duty after all), and Rarity is dismayed seeing the monsters half her friends have become and fears what monster she's becoming working as sniper.)
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Sorry, my bad. I meant Stories From the Front (utterly NSFW, though there's a SFW version which just edits out some pictures), about the South Wind (courier / liaison to other Weather Patrols) of the Ponyville Weather Patrol, Stormfront, and her adventures (both sexual and otherwise) as she goes all over Equestria doing her job.
She is a very odd Pegasus. She's the daughter of a huge itinerant Earth Pony stallion (in fact, Sev's blog is from where I got the idea of the itinerant Earth Ponies) and a small Pegasus mare who leads Canterlot's weather patrol. She herself takes after her father; she's really big as well -- about as large as Luna, and about the biggest non-Alicorn Pony you'll ever see flying.
Her family was strange and non-traditional in ways Sev probably thinks enlightened and which I think consituted a dubious child rearing environment. Stormfront turned out nymphomaniac, xenophiliac, and something of a voyeur as well. (Her sister's kind of promiscuous by normal Pony standards, but Stormfront puts her in the shade).
What sets this above the usual Ponies Have Lots of Sex blog are four things:
(1) Sev is aware of the fact that most Ponies don't act like Stormfront -- and in consequence Stormy is a weirdo, knows she's a weirdo, and feels a bit alienated from many other Ponies. She's something of an outsider peering in or visiting their lives, and she doesn't always understand their motivations. When all is said and done, she's just passing through, which I think is at the root of the loneliness that in part fuels her nymphomania.
(2) The background is well-described -- we learn a lot about Sev's Equestria. And it's really well drawn as well, there is a lot of Landscape Porn as well as porn of the other variety.
(3) It has strong overall story arcs beyond "Stormfront has lots and lots of sex." Stormy is a true heroine, though humble about it, and she does things that save a lot of Pony lives.
(4) Finally, Sev doesn't try to make his OC heroine better by degrading the canon heroines and heroes. Instead, they are mostly treated with respect (*).
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(*) There is one exception in the whole sequence -- a dirty joke of profound perversion which manages to not be directly pornographic, but has tremendously depraved implications. Stormy accidentally stumbles into Shining Armor's and Cadance's quarters and surprises him painting something over her Cutie Mark. It's another Cutie Mark -- a very familiar one. But the scene implies not actual incest, but an incestuous fantasy on his part which Cadance is willing to play out for him.
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What would you say is the difference between Melody as a teen, and Melody as an adult here?
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Calmer, more sophisticated, more truly secure in her own (impressive) abilities rather than merely putting up a mask of arrogance. But then she's a successful adult now, rather an an ambitious filly in her early teens.
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I'll admit, seeing the believably depicted immature Seven Tales grown up and having gotten a taste of the realities of the paths they've chosen for themselves is something I wish I could see more of. And seeing how they differ from teens to adults.
Well done, it was an aggressive, witty debate but still both were able to find commonalities between them. Cultural exchange indeed.
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Thanks! Tales is one of those 'pushed under the rug'. Where G3 is hip to hate. And people at least acknowledge G1 had actually nasty baddies in it... MLPTs is just... forgotten.
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Even though I haven't watched it in forever, I have a soft spot in my heart for Tales. It is swept under the rug and its kind of a shame.
Unicorns would be also leading force in technology, because to master magic you have to learn math, physics and chemistry and it's easier to invent when you can hold items directly with your mind.
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True, but in this case, it's just a matter of what development their culture went in after the tribes basically split apart. Followed by the great reunification thanks to Starlight The First and her friends.
The first song that Adagio instinctively chose to sing at Canterlot High was the one that reminded her of her friend.
I'm not crying! YOU'RE crying!
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Of course it was a dark reflection of the one she sang with Melody.
That was a good story. Its sad to see how nice Adagio was before she became a siren.
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If with a giant ego to rival Melody's and Ace's... but yeah, she wasn't a sea-witch blessed by Equestria's version of the devil.