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My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
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Less feelz, more healz. I want the pain to be some gain and then some more gain.
I like this story, but it's starting to seem like you've got Disord on your writing staff. Getting a little too random.
6202622 Is it random? What's the random part?
Fvhgtttggg I just face keyboarded
This may be a typo. Should it not be his instead of her?
Blue's Clues!
Speaking of clues, are we going to get a peak at what's been going on in the home turf? Luna isn't all that descriptive and its been a while....
Keep going! ;)
6203050 Fixed!
Don't capitalize "awful" there, since it's still part of the previous sentence (I'm pretty sure).
Silver recoiled "a" little.
I think that last part should be "I want to adore and accept others."
Amusingly enough, "scuzzy" is misspelled here.
6202635 I think what Lunar_Twilight means is that some events - and reactions to events - seem to happen without (sufficient) explanation of how the cause led to the effect. To be less abstract, I can understand how it'd be hard to figure out quite why the revelation of Bottom's past has caused Silver to descend into an emotional maelstrom of personal pain.
So now we come to the part that the author was insinuating (correctly) that I overlooked last time, that being Silver's confessing his past to Bottom. In my defense, I had overlooked this part because I didn't see how it could possibly be important to the story or to Bottom and Silver's relationship. Silver tells her he used to be a human, she doesn't see him any differently for it, and then we all move on to the next thing, over and done.
Of course, it didn't turn out that way. The big twist here was that Bottom also used to be human, being somehow transported to this world (and made into a pony) via an unknown process, becoming a sex slave shortly thereafter, eventually to be found and claimed by Silver. This revelation had a big impact on Silver, and I can empathize with that; learning that Bottom used to be human makes her seem even more like a tragic character...though I'm not sure why. Whatever she was born as, Bottom ended up alone and then abused terribly for a long time...does her birth-race really make that much of a difference? The best explanation I can come up with for why this feels so tragic is that it confirms that Bottom did having at least one loving parent, from whom she was separated through no fault of her (or her mother's) own, rather than being thrown away or otherwise never having had a chance at a better life.
Unfortunately, Silver apparently still sees himself as complicit in the hardships that Bottom has suffered, instead of being a saving grace, and this knowledge caused him to go completely to pieces...surprisingly so. It's worth underlining just how badly Silver received this information, as it caused an emotional cascade that caused him to descend into tears not once, but twice.
I can empathize with Silver. Really, I can...matters of the heart are painful, and mistakes can haunt you for a long time, usually proportional to how egregious they were. But at this point he's honestly beginning to strain my ability to feel sorry for him. I say that not because he hasn't been having a hard time of it, nor because of how well his life has been going since becoming an alicorn prince (notwithstanding the loss of Aila...that one truly hurt), but because this entire sequence - everything he did in this chapter - felt like a retreat from how much ground he's gained in terms of personal growth.
To put it simply, this is Silver whining about how awful life can sometimes be. That's true, but the way he's handling it is not how grown-ups act. I don't mean the crying (though that it beginning to become tiresome), but rather the way he's trying to brute-force his way to making everything around him conform to how he wants it to be.
The most notable example of this was his complete and utter disregard for political concerns in his need to eschew concubines so that he could feel good about himself. It's a damn good thing that Wajdi and Jawa were so well-disposed towards him, because they did everything short of holding up a sign saying "you're about to cause a major diplomatic shitstorm, you moron." Seriously, does Silver not quite grasp how close he came to damaging - potentially very badly - diplomatic relations between Equestria and Saddle Arabia? Would it really have been worth alienating what seems like their closest ally in the entire region just so that Silver could stop feeling like a heel over having mares that he's keeping specifically to have sex with?
Can you imagine any politician throwing away all tact and statesmanship because they got emotional over an issue? That's conduct unbecoming of someone who makes decisions on behalf of others, which is what a politician is. This was Silver being so wrapped up in his own problems that he lost sight of everything else. It was a fit of pique, a temper-tantrum, that could have done serious damage on the world stage...and very well might have anyway, since even if Wajdi and Jawa were patient with him he did still insult their generosity, their taste, and their hospitality.
More than that is how Silver is apparently unable to live with himself if he has concubines, even though he's okay with having more and more wives. This change in titles is apparently impugning his ability to have an emotional relationship with his concubines, and so he sees himself as having no choice but to marry them, at least if his other wives approve...which means that he needs Night Watch, Fast Change, and Twilight Sparkle to sign off on them, and possibly Luna, Celestia, and Cadance too, depending on how you define the whole "circle of princesses" bit.
Needless to say, this is a terrible idea on his part, and another example of his immaturity with regard to not being able to apparently live with any situation that isn't tailored to suit his personal needs. Silver, "responsibility" means dealing with situations you find unpleasant or onerous, especially when it's for a greater benefit, whether for yourself or others.
Why is having so many wives a bad idea? Well for one thing it creates myriad issues with the royal command structure and chains of influence. Now, Equestria is a land where the spirit of things trumps technicalities, and moreover Silver's various marriages appear to be morganastic in nature (a morganastic marriage is a royal marriage where the lower-ranked spouse does not assume the same rank, title, and privileges as the one they're marrying), but this is still going to cause issues with regards to exactly whether or not these myriad wives are empowered to speak on Silver's behalf or not; even if they don't have the title, it's going to be unclear if their actions have implicit royal backing, which can lead to terrible confusion, especially if a foreign national is involved. Concubines, by their very nature, don't have any such (possible) presumption of the crown approving their actions, unless they formally state that they do.
Also, I know that Silver doesn't want to rank whom he loves more than whom, but that's not something that can be helped. Night Watch has already started to express jealousy, and Silver responded to this by flat-out stating that he loves her more than the others - in front of the others no less - and that if she really wanted him to, he'd leave them for her. In other words, he's already started to deal with issues and jealousy by ranking whom he loves more. Concubinage formalizes that. Silver might want all of his mares to be in love with each other, or at least not jealous of each other, but at the end of the day this just isn't realistic, and has already reached the breaking point; even before he left, his stable of wives was balkanizing into sub-groups. Having some of them have a lesser status than "wives" explicitly tells the ones who are wives that he values them most of all, while still letting him have a relationship with his harem girls.
Simply put, Silver can't just keep giving his heart away and hoping that the purity of his love eliminates all jealousy and bad feelings. He can have multiple relationships, but he can't keep saying that they're all equal in every regard that matters, because the continual addition of new mares means that their comparative emotional value is being reduced with each new addition. Adding tiers is the only realistic answer. He may not like that, but, well...too freaking bad. Be an adult and accept that you can't have everything you want, especially when you have so much more than everybody else!
This sequence, more than anything, makes me realize just how important Fiddah is. She's the only one of his group who has any sort of experience with this kind of thing, and who could let Silver know ahead of time the myriad logistical and political problems that will result if he keeps trying to move everything around so that he can operate in perfect comfort. She needs to sit him down and explain to him in no uncertain terms that, as a prince, he needs to figure this out.
Because if he keeps trying to get absolutely everything he wants, it's going to blow up in his face far, far worse than this altogether minor issue.
6204063 Typos deported to the Anubian lands.
Well that threw me for a loop. TEXT ,YOU SON OF A *****! WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT TO A KID!
The tangled Web you weave silver is one of so much emotions. Great chapter and silver needs to hear this...
6204286 Silver is not a good politician. Silver is not a good prince. Silver is not good at being royalty. He has had these things thrust upon him, then dragged out on this trip away from his support structure, and it has been a near-constant display of discomforts and tension. When he wasn't being physically attacked, he was being stared at and judged on his every action. Hell, the one time that comes to mind when he was just allowed to exist, and buy a nice gift for his friend, you sneered at it and barely counted it as worth writing, let alone reading.
The idea that Bottom was a human child makes him feel incredibly dirty, and why shouldn't it? Before he had the nice shield of 'Well that's just ponies being ponies, good thing I'm a morally superior human, woo!', and that shield was ripped away from him as he finds out he isn't taking care of a pony mess, but a human one, that bottom isn't just a silly pony doing silly pony things, but a person. He has no shield for that, and it stabbed him deeply. Is this what being Prince is about? Is he just supposed to nod a little and pretend nothing is a big deal? He doesn't like that world. He doesn't like himself, and he doesn't like the entire situation.
He didn't want to come here, that was Celestia's decree. He didn't want to be a stud, that was Luna's decree. He didn't ask to be wed to all the princesses, that was Twilight's decree. His agency has been shortcutted quite a bit, and all he wants is some peace, and for the pain of this journey to come to an end.
Does that make him a sad example of a prince? He cares less by the moment. He didn't ask to be royalty, but he's been lumped with the job, so there it is.
6204670 Okay, first things first; I didn't "sneer" at that scene - I pointed out that it didn't add anything to the overall narrative progression. If you wanted to paint that scene as "Silver getting a chance to be Silver, away from the various intrigues and problems with being a prince in a foreign land" then the story should have depicted the scene in that manner. You can't just set up a scene with nothing more than a description of what's there and what's happening and then complain when people don't read it as having the same purpose that you had in mind when you wrote it. That's why I've been calling for more exposition - you can't expect the readers to intuit a scene's purpose with nothing to go on except what you think follows "naturally."
As for Silver, yes he's had his agency curtailed by his job: welcome to having authority! He didn't ask for it? Yeah, a lot of life is having to deal with things that we haven't asked for. We do expect to have personal agency, but that - like all things - has reasonable limits, which in most cases are set by a given situation. Being mature means accepting that and handling it as best you can.
Yes, Silver is a poor prince and a terrible politician. He was also a terrible pony when he started out, but he got better at it. Admittedly it happened slowly over a long period of time, but he did. I'm expecting him to at least try to do the same here. This chapter wasn't that; it was him having a pity-party (the one kind of party that Pinkie wouldn't sign off on) over how hard it's been. Even then, there's nothing wrong with that, except for the fact that he's taking action to try and dismantle the situation, rather than dealing with it. That is a bridge too far. If he really wants to go that far, he should turn in his crown, renounce being a prince, and try to find a way out of being an alicorn.
Privileges come with responsibilities, and those can be burdensome and onerous. Silver is getting privilege after privilege - being an alicorn, for example, and having so many wives and lovers - that it's natural that he's going to have great responsibilities to go along with them. Saying "I didn't ask for this" is a child's response. You have to take the bad with the good. The sooner Silver learns that, the sooner he'll start to "stallion up."
Rights?
6205593 Tweaked.
your other story's are good and fun to read but dam you just seam to pore the power in to Silver this story is just so good it literary has a drive behind it.
you just keep wowing us in all but every chapter.
dependent