Trial By Sunshine
While my primary focus was on Princess Twilight Sparkle at that moment, my lone wolf puppet was following the strange being known as Muzen. As we walked, my puppet’s ear twitched, focusing on a distant but approaching noise. Eventually, I realized that it was a combination of voices, hoofsteps on packed dirt, and might be wheeled vehicles rolling along. It wasn’t a sound I was intimately familiar with, and in fact had only been heard by my other.
However, I proved to be correct in my assumptions when the trees parted before us, revealing a busy dirt road. Deer like Muzen walked in both directions. Some were clothed, some were armored, but the vast majority were buck naked. Some were pulling carts, while others were walking with friends and holding conversations.
And every single one of them was missing a face.
If that wasn't odd enough, some of them were translucent, or outright transparent. Sure, Muzen’s short tail dripped slime and his body warped like it was clay, but seeing straight through them, some with only the faintest traces of internal organs visible, made me reevaluate them. Maybe the name “flowing stone deer” was more literal than I thought. All evidence pointed to them being a liquid species.
I really shouldn't have been so surprised. Between me being me and the different sapient individuals I’d already met, the logic of the Other’s world had already taken it up the butt and been made this world's little bitch.
Idly, I wondered if I could even make them bleed, and what would happen if I tried to drink one of them with my roots. I wondered other things too, such as how they lifted heavy objects without squishing, but that first thought stuck out to me the most.
Across the road, Muzen led me. I got many odd stares from the locals; even without eyes, I could tell they were watching me because of how their heads turned. They made absolutely no effort to be discreet about it. And, if being stared at by a faceless mass wasn’t disturbing enough, my instincts were suddenly screaming at me, telling me that there was something very, very wrong with this situation.
My wolf puppet, despite having no lungs, inhaled, pulling on the very air itself. The scent of the forest sharpened as I focused more of my attention to it. Something comparable to adrenaline filled my being. I sniffed once, twice, and then I knew what had scared me so badly.
They had no scent.
I could smell their cloth, and I could smell their metals, woods, and leathers, but I could not smell them.
I sniffed again.
Scratch that. I could; they just smelled exactly like the ground they were walking on. It was an earthy, rich smell, similar to fertile topsoil, but stronger than soil’s aroma should have been.
With that in mind, I relaxed somewhat. The lack of an immediately obvious scent still had me on edge. It was like seeing something without a shadow, when it clearly should have had one.
I realized with a start that I’d paused in the middle of the road, and the deer were impatiently moving their way around me. Muzen was staring back at me, his tentacle-like antlers beckoning me forward.
“Sorry,” I muttered quietly as I resumed moving. Once I got a little closer to him, I asked, “Where are you leading me?”
Muzen, with his face still mimicking mine, replied slowly, “I aaammm taaakiinng yyyooouuu tooo hhoommee. Grrraaannndfaaathheerr wwwoooouuuld wwwaaaannnt tooo seeee yyyooouuu.”
“Your grandfather? Why?” I asked, quite curious.
“Heee schoolllaaarrr? Teeeaachheeerrr? I doonn’t knooowww thee bessst woorrd. Graanndfaatheerr knowws common tongue beetteer thann meee.” He weaved to the left to avoid a tree. I did too, and was rewarded with the first hints of a village peeking through the gaps in the trees.
It was much like a medieval town, save for being made completely of wood rather than stone. More flowing stone deer walked up and down the narrow streets, chatting in their strange language and generally minding their own business. They still stared at me, but none of them were openly hostile.
As we walked, I spotted various businesses. Smiths forging metals, crasftsmen working on their various crafts, bakers making delicious-smelling bread. We were in the market district, apparently. I started cataloguing what was here. If I knew what they had, I could use that to make money (assuming the Princesses didn’t decide to kill first me for my mistake with the firebreather). Perhaps I could be a merchant for them, since I could navigate that barrier.
On the streets of the village, there were numerous blobs of green goo, none larger than a small cat, sliding about on their own. Many of them even looked like they were smiling with silly little mouths. On closer inspection, I noticed that each one was following a particular deer. “Are the little blobs pets?” I asked.
Muzen nodded.
I stopped near a blob and gave it a sniff. It had the same earthy scent as everyone else in this little town in the Exclusion Zone. The blob’s owner drew closer, as if readying herself to protect it from me. The blob itself, however, simply extended a curious tendril up to touch me. The moment it touched my puppet’s wood, numbness spread out from the point of contact. The branch dropped off of my body, no longer under my control. The green light of my magic no longer seeped from the cracks in the wood; it was totally inert.
I recoiled with a yelp, backed up, lowered down, and growled threateningly at the blob. Whatever it had done had cut my connection with that branch.
The blob backed up. Muzen said something to the blob’s owner, who scooped it up with her antler tentacles and carried it away. “Whhaat Haappeenned?” My companion asked.
“It blocked my magic from working on that branch,” I replied. Glancing about, I spotted a few broken pieces of wood propped up against a nearby wall. A quick thought summoned them towards me, where I affixed them to my face. From within their cracks, green light spilled forth. Cut as straight as they were, I knew that they looked awkward there, but I had no choice at the moment. “Why though?”
“Grandfather miiight know,” Muzen replied. “The gelal shooouuuldn’t haaave huuurt yyyooouuu.”
Gelal? He must mean the little slimes. “Then let’s get to your grandfather before I touch any more of those things,” I replied.
“I’m really sorry that we had to cut this short,” I told Compass Rose as the two of us traveled back to Ponyville.
“You keep saying that,” she replied. “And I keep saying that I’ll be fine. Those leaves you found for me are doing their job. I’ll be good to go soon.”
“Yes, well, I still think you should see a doctor,” I quipped.
“And I’m starting to think that there's some other reason you want us to get back so quickly,” she retorted. “Was it that armored thing you saw?”
“Muzen? No. He actually turned out to be harmless... Or at least not aggressive.”
“Then why?”
I sheepishly looked away. “Because I mistakenly attacked and broke something of Princess Twilight Sparkle’s and then offended her badly. Now she's called Princess Celestia to give me a trial tomorrow, but it's going to be a farce because you all think wolves are monsters, and she's gonna side with the purple one and they're gonna come and chop me down and I don't wanna die!”
“Jack!” she hollered. “Calm down! You're not going to die.”
“Yes I am!” I whined.
“No, she's not,” Compass assured me. “Princess Celestia doesn't execute ponies. The worst she’s ever done is banishing her sister-”
“She's gonna uproot me?!” I exclaimed, aghast. “Ahhh!”
“WILL YOU QUIT IT?! Princess Celestia is not going to uproot you either!”
I shut up, only slightly less panicked.
“Good. Now listen here: Princess Celestia is a kind, wise, and fair ruler. She does not banish, execute, torture, or imprison anything that does not deserve it, and she is known the world over for giving the benefit of the doubt. You broke something; they can fix it or get a new one — that’s no big deal. You said it was an accident, and Celestia will take that into consideration. I can’t imagine you getting anything more than a fine or a few hours of community service. It’s a slap on the fetlock.”
I still wasn’t convinced, but I was calmer, though.
She sighed. “Look, if it’s any consolation, I’ll vouch for you. I don’t know you that well, but you’re making sure I get looked after and you’re bringing me out of one of Equestria’s most dangerous forests alive and uninjured by anything we reasonably could have expected. That says good things about you, and I want Celestia to know that.”
I cracked a smile. I wasn’t happy, but I was better. “Thanks.”
“Not a problem.”
I just hoped she didn’t hate me after Princess Celestia called it attempted murder.
I was calmer the next morning, and not just because I had started bottling everything up again. My imagination was still tormenting me with visions of my own demise, but I was now at least dealing with it and not mindlessly panicking or slipping into denial.
The sun on my leaves was especially pleasant that morning, as was the mist that curled playfully around my branches. For a day that could be my last day as a free (or living) tree, It sure was a beautiful one.
Or maybe that was just me trying to distract myself.
I’m so screwed.
Nine of my thirteen puppets wait at Applejack’s orchard, tending to the ally trees to pass the time. Three of them — Lycan, Taur, and the largest of my wolf puppets — waited by my trunk as my last line of defense. All three of them were armed with spears and surrounded by the traps and wooden stakes I spent the whole night building. Call me paranoid, but I really didn’t want anybody coming near me today. As for the final puppet, it was still in Muzen’s town in the Exclusion Zone.
And then there was a flash in the distance in the orchard, calling my focus to the nine wolf puppets. They turned, and were greeted with the sight of a large, white mare with a rippling mane, a horn like a spear, and massive wings. Her scent was sweet and perfumed, like overly fancy cake.
Behind her, a dozen guards, some from each of the three pony tribes, march in sync. They smelled of sweat and tears, but surprisingly little blood. Still, each one of them was armed and armored.
But all that paled in comparison to the sense of raw power that I could feel radiating off of the Princess. It’s palpable. Constructed from magic themselves, my wolves trembled as her power interfered slightly with my transmission seeds. Worse, I knew the feeling of that power. Every plant did. It was the power of the sun itself.
It wasn't panic that wells up in me, but shame. One who was apparently the avatar of the life-giving sun has come to judge me. I couldn’t make my puppets meet her eyes. In fact, I immediately set them belly-up.
“You must be the puppets of Alpha Lumber Jack,” Princess Celestia said once she was within the range ponies considered earshot. I told her that I was. “Good. Please rise, Alpha Lumber Jack. There’s no need to roll around in the dirt.”
Hastily, I returned them all upright. “Apologies.”
“Do not fret about it,” she replied. “I do wish we could have met under different circumstances, however. Up until yesterday, Twilight had been sending me everything she had learned about you. Lumber Jack, you are quite fascinating.”
“Thank you,” I said. What else could I have said?
She motioned with a hoof. One of the guards presented her with a small box, which she in turn levitated towards me. She opened it and angled it such that one of my puppets could see inside. The box contained several strands of blue, green, purple, and pink hair — strands of her mane, I realized. “I recalled Twilight mentioning the exchange of gifts between leaders, and that you had offered Twilight a bit of yourself when you first met as a token of peace. I figured that it would be best to start off on the right hoof, so to speak. I present to you a few strands of my mane.”
I plucked the mane from the box. As far as neutrality gifts went, it was perfectly acceptable. I looped the strands around a wolf’s paw’s toe and rolled it such that it would knot onto that toe.
Having come prepared this time, I pulled out my own gift: a strand of lure-flowers and one of my metallic apples. “For you, my lures and my fruit — my pride.”
She took them and examined them closely. She took a deep whiff of my flowers — possibly unaware of the aphrodisiac component — and pulled them away with a noticeable blush on her face. As for the apple, she examined it once and then left it floating in her sunshine colored aura.
“Are you not going to eat it?” I asked. And though I would never admit it to her, I was slightly insulted that she didn’t immediately partake of my fruit.
“Ah, no. I was planning to save it for later and to share it with my sister,” the princess replied. “Thank you, though.”
“You are welcome,” I said with a nod.
“Now, since these are not the ideal circumstances that I had wished to meet you in, we have to deal with the real reason why I’m here: your attack on Spike.”
I shamefully hung my head, but said nothing.
“I have heard from Twilight Sparkle and Spike already. However, before I make any judgment on the matter, I felt it was only fair to hear your side of the story. Walk me through the incident. I understand you were at Zecora’s hut when Twilight and Spike arrived; you may start there.”
I made my puppets nod. I still couldn’t seem to meet her gaze, however. “Yes. I was at Zecora’s hut. I had been escorting Compass Rose with my other puppets. We were mapping out the forest, and we came to the Exclusion Zone.” Her eye twitched in time with a subtle fluctuation of her radiated power. “We noticed that we kept getting pushed off track, so I used my multiple perspectives to get us through the illusion that surrounded the area. We found a glowing fence.
“Compass and I started walking parallel to the fence in order to map it out, but soon we discovered that the fence was glowing like the sun, and that it had given Compass a nasty sunburn.” Here, Celestia’s neutral expression turned into a faint frown. I continued uninterrupted, “We decided to retreat for the time being. I sent another puppet to Zecora’s home, the one that Twilight saw, to learn if there were any plants that could heal Compass Rose. When I was finished, I heard Princess Twilight Sparkle and the fi- the dragon approaching. Zecora told me to stay, for she knew that they had something to say to me.
“Zecora opened the door, escorting them inside. I saw the dragon but did not immediately attack him. My only knowledge of dragons was the larger, winged variety, like the green one who lives in a cave deep in the forest. The dragon in Zecora’s hut looked nothing like that. In fact, I recalled him from before, from the days before I was sapient, when my former pack leader ordered us to hunt him. At the time, he displayed no fire, so I assumed he was just a lizard person. I stated as much.
“He took offense to that and blew dragonfire in my face. My wooden face. While in the middle of a wooden hut in the middle of a forest. He risked setting my puppet on fire, or worse, the whole damn forest. And in that one last instant, I recalled the pain of the last dragon-started forest fire, one I barely survived.
“The dragon had just declared himself a threat, one I couldn’t flee from. I had to fight... or so I thought. Zecora chastised me afterwards, saying I should have just talked to Princess Twilight Sparkle. At the risk of losing my friendship with her, I realized that I shouldn’t have struck the dragon, and went to go apologize to her.”
Celestia took a second to mull over my story. “I see. And am I correct in my understanding that when you apologized to Twilight, you apologized for offending her?”
“Yes, your highness.”
“And not for assaulting Spike, who I note you have yet to speak the name of?”
“He threatened my life, and the lives of my allies and my pack. He threatened the entire forest. And, though I didn’t know it until shortly afterwards, he threatened the city in the Exclusion Zone, too.”
Celestia blinked. For the first time since this interrogation began, her poker face had a significant crack in it. “City? What city? As far as I’m aware, nopony lives in the Exclusion Zone. Nopony can; the upwelling of magic distorts the flora and fauna into deadly monsters. That’s why I erected the fence and Luna erected the barrier illusion in the first place.”
“They aren’t exactly ponies,” I replied.
“Muzen, what’s the name of this village?” my distant puppet asked.
A second later, the flowing stone deer replied, “Eezdraug.”
With the name in mind, I continued telling Celestia, “Eezdraug’s full of the flowing stone deer. Nice people as far as I can tell, but they aren’t afraid of staring at oddities.”
“But... No, I’ll investigate that later,” Celestia says. “Regardless of the existence or lack thereof of this Eezdraug and these deer, you claim to have discovered it some time between this incident and now.”
“Minutes after my last encounter with Princess Twilight Sparkle, to be exact, your highness.”
“Which means that their safety was not on your mind at the time. Instead, it was your pack and your ‘allies’ that were on your mind. Are any of them as intelligent as you?”
“No, they aren’t,” I replied dourly. “I don’t see why that matters, though. I depend on them; they depend on me. If the dragon had his way, we’d all be ash.”
Celestia’s smile returned. “Thankfully, I have to disagree. Spike is only a young child, both in pony and dragon terms. He is too young to truly understand the repercussions of his actions, true, but he also holds no malicious intent. He suffered a few lacerations and a few lightly cracked bones, but nothing that he won’t recover from within the month. He also holds no ill-will towards you, as your friend Zecora spoke to him and made him aware of the foolishness of his actions. And yes, from now on he is barred from the forest; you may rest easy knowing that he will not be burning it down.
“However, that doesn’t excuse you. You attacked him with the intent to kill when a peaceful solution was not only available, but arguably more practical. This is not something that I can just ignore. But, this brings us the issue of how exactly to punish you. Imprisonment and house arrest are impossible, given your nature, as is the temporary sealing of your magic. Thus, I think an appropriate punishment would be eight hours of community service a week for a minimum of one month, to continue indefinitely until you genuinely apologize to both Spike and Twilight Sparkle and they accept said apology.”
My branches rustled and my flowers twitched. All of the wolves present cocked their heads to the side.
That was it? That was my entire punishment? Work and an apology? Hell, I was getting so bored lately that I was looking for work anyway. At least now I’d have something to fill my days with. “Yes, Princess Celestia. I’ll apologize to Princess Twilight Sparkle and... Spike.”
“Very good! Now, I’ll arrange something with Applejack, seeing as your range extends at least this far. If your range can extend into town, you may discuss with her about getting work there as well.”
“I understand,” I replied. Maybe it was time to publicly unveil Taur, given that its range was further than any of my other puppets.
Whatever Celestia was about to say next was interrupted by a flash of white light, in contrast to the golden light that heralded Celestia’s arrival. “Oh ho! What do we have here?” a new voice inquired. The owner of the voice was like nothing I had ever seen before, and that was saying something considering Muzen and the other deer. He was comparable to a chimera, true, but he was composed of far more component creatures. He also had a strange, cartoonish look to his body, which made him look rather comical.
“Hello, Discord,” Celestia said. Her tone wasn’t as cheerful as one would be if a friend popped in to say hello. It put me somewhat on guard.
“Celly, dear, who’s this little fella?” Discord asked, circling around my puppets, floating despite not flapping his mismatched wings.
“I’m Lumber Jack,” I said, using all of my puppets at once.
Discord blinked once. In the span of that blink, a miniscule fraction of a second, his asymmetrical face warped from a “curious gaze” to a “shit-eating grin.” I felt like his crimson eyes were piercing right through me and staring into my soul.
As I realized a moment later, that was exactly what he was doing.
“So that’s where you ended up.”
What did he mean? I voiced my confusion, and noted that Celestia also seemed to be waiting for an answer.
“Have you ever wondered how you came to be?” Discord asked, drifting up close to my face. The cartoonish effect was gone; the creature before me instead looked very old, very powerful, and very dangerous, without having changed much at all.
“I’ll admit, I am curious.”
“And I’m curious about how much you remember of your old home,” he countered.
Well, if he wanted information for information, I’d play at that game. “Truthfully, not much. Some skills, some general knowledge, what I was, but nothing on who the Other was or what the Other did in life.”
“The Other. Fitting,” Discord replied, still smiling. He contorted around the puppet I was tending to favor in conversation. “The Other, as you put it, was a human from another world.” He popped his head up and looked at Princess Celestia. “No, Tia, not that human world; a different world. A darker world.”
He looked back at me. “A dying world. It ran afoul with my... estranged son. Neither ‘estranged’ nor ‘son’ is entirely accurate, but it fits for now. Anyway, little Oblivion decided to start snacking on your Other’s world — tore a great, big hole in it, he did — and your Other fell out of that hole and into the incomprehensible void between world. The local version of me, being the swell guy he was, tossed your Other my way to spare them an eternity of the madness of unreality. I shoved them into this world just to see what would happen.”
“And what did happen?” I asked.
“Well, only most of them made it. A few little bits and pieces of their soul got smeared across the multiverse. But, even if their soul imploded in here from the lack of structural integrity, it would have been better than unreality for them. Surprise, surprise, their partial soul latched onto a proto-soul, yours. Pretty sweet deal, if you asked me. One of you got their soul stabilized, the other got super intelligence, among other things, and to top it off, the Tree of Harmony even helped you close the wounds, so to speak.”
He vanished in a flash of light, reappearing above Celestia. “Oh, I certainly didn’t expect them to survive that well! I really should go check on the other souls I brought here. Maybe some of them survived as well! Oh, this is so exciting!”
With a flash, he was suddenly wearing a uniform that I recognized from Star Trek and was standing in front of a blue box that most certainly hadn’t been there before, but was definitely the TARDIS from Doctor Who. I didn’t even think those shows would exist in this world, but apparently he knew about them. Or if he was truthful about having a “local version,” as he put it, then maybe that one somehow passed along the knowledge. Either way, the sudden pop culture reference caught me off guard.
Discord stepped into the TARDIS, and, with a *gurgle gurgle gurgle* — definitely not a TARDIS noise — the time machine vanished.
And then a DeLorean appeared with a *glub glub.* Sticking his head out, a lab coat-wearing Discord addressed the princess. “Tia, despite what you’re thinking, and despite Jack technically being a demon by your overly broad definition, he is definitely probably not going to never potentially cause no problems never. Ok, for real this time, ta ta!”
He was gone again. Unlike me, however, Celestia and her guards were not looking at the spot where Discord had been, but at my puppets. Worry creased her face.
“Um... do you mind explaining?” I asked.
She sighed. Even her magical presence wilted a bit. “That was Discord, the reformed Spirit of Chaos and Disharmony. He is a very powerful reality warper, but sometimes I question just how powerful he is.”
“And that bit about me being a demon and the Other’s homeworld being eaten?” I asked, very worried. Worry was becoming a prominent emotional state for me, it seemed.
“Discord was telling the truth, or at least some trimmed version of it,” Celestia replied. “If your soul is from another universe, then you do indeed fall into the very broad category of “demon.” A demon’s soul obeys different physical laws than a native soul, and can potentially be highly destructive because of that.
“As for that talk of that ‘Other’ you kept mentioning, while I can’t pretend to know the context of it, I can safely assume that he was telling the truth.” She shook her head a little; her mane stayed wavy, in defiance of her head’s motion. “Anyway, Lumber Jack, I appear to have more things to investigate than I previously thought. I will have to bid you farewell for now. Applejack should be in contact with you as soon as I get your punishment fully arranged. I’m sorry we couldn’t meet over more friendly terms. Perhaps once things have settled down, we should meet again for a more recreational get together. I’ll be in touch.”
I nodded.
She turned back towards her guards and started walking. In a low, soft voice, she whispered to her guards, “Contact the Paladin Order; add Lumber Jack to the watch list.”
I really don’t think she intended for me to hear that. She misjudged how sensitive my ears were.
So, to expand on Discord's explanation, before becoming Lumber Jack, the Other lost the part of its soul that contained most of their memories and all of their identity. Alone, it wasn't enough to make up a whole person, so the soul would implode on its own. Together, the tree and the human fragment form a jubokko timberwolf (of sorts).
Also, to continue the tradition, this is the same Discord that appears in all of my fics. He's a single being spanning the multiverse of my writing, and he speaks in the color blue. Lumber Jack's human portions come from the universe of Black Queen, Red King (which is in the early stages of a rewrite). It's a parallel version of Earth that's not quite the same as our own.
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Self-discovery time? Self-discovery time~
I'm... surprisingly okay with this. It's not too Discord Ex Machina, and he's pretty much guaranteed that the human consciousness isn't going to reappear and assert itself anytime soon. Now I just have to wonder what in the world is going on with the flowing stone deer.
(Also Discord's comment of "I really should go check on the other souls I brought here. Maybe some of them survived as well!" Now, will they appear here or in their own tangent stories... we'll see. Hopefully not here unless they merge with something unexpected like the CMC clubhouse or a plunder-vine).
6707832
With the constraints Jack is dealing with in-universe, plus the meta restraints I've placed on the story, getting the readers information about the world is difficult unless Jack goes out of his way to seek it. Discord being Discord and randomly popping in worked as a good one-time info-dump.
As of now, only one of those souls (also similarly damaged) is within conceivable reach of Lumber Jack, but I haven't entirely decided how to deal with him. If I had, there would have been more hints to him during this chapter.
I laughed so hard at hismfreakout. She is going to uprooooot meeeeee!!!
Hadn't thought about that, Celestia would really appaer god-like to him wouldn't she? The embodiment of the fire that can destroy him but also the sun that gives him life.
And things are getting interesting once more.
Very good chapter, nice work.
I don´t now what I expect next to happen, but this is stills as interessting, as in the earlier chapters.
... Okay. Let's clean this mess up a little.
There we go, much better.
Anyway, a 'paladin order'? Huh. Used in the context we have seen it in it is probably an order for dealing with 'demons'. Then again, while she may have called them Paladins it feels like a different word should have been used. Inquisitors or maybe even crusaders, if that name wasn't already taken, seem more appropriate in this case.
Grrr there needs to be an emote for worried... And if there is I can't seem to find it just now.
6708122
It's called him being intentionally vague.
And yes, that scene inspired me.
Oh come on what happened in the exclusion zone? Did Lumber Jack spend the night with the grandfather in silence?
Why do you torment me so wille179?
Great story
6708188
I'm going to go back to it. Don't worry.
blobs of green goo
--[Oh hell, Discord visited this place, didn't he?]
Was is that armored
-it
plants that could Compass Rose.
--heal
Well then, Paladin order? Here's to hoping Bon Bon doesn't come strolling by with a hammer
6708685
Thanks.
6708881
np
led
peeking
awkward
known the world over
whiff
partake of (one partakes in a an activity, but partakes of food or drink or other refreshments)
staring
available
DeLorean
6709403
Thanks.
Across the road, Muzen lead me
I knew that they looked awkwards there
1. Led.
2. Awkward.
I'm curious, Muzen said he wasn't so fluent in the 'common' tongue is that right? Aside from the stretched words does that also apply to his vocabulary? Just only one part was sticking out at me, the paragraph where he was mentioning about what his grandfather was.
6709696
It's a combination of him being rusty and having never fully grasped the language in the first place. If he wasn't taking his time to pronounce the words carefully, his accent would be really thick.
6709724 Reminds me of German class.
If you make each chapter intentionally longer eventually the chapters might become too massive for practicality. As a personal preference I prefer chapters that is not longer than 6k words (about 30 minutes reading for me). But any length up to chapters longer than 12k is okay for me. , but after that size they start becoming untennable for me to read.
Also update times might become longer between each chapter (or deadlines harder to keep if you do a schedule). So maybe You should set a limit for intentional size at something. Well your decision anyway.
Well that sentence is one heck of a can of worms. But it can be solved with math!
Definitely not (posetive +1)
Probably (neutral with a slight negative canotation -0.2)
Never cause no problems (negative -1)
Probably (slightly negative -0.2 but paired with the other negative they balance each other out a little).
So ultimately (1-0.2) + (-1+0.2) = 0.8 - 0.8 = 0 the entire sentence is quite neutral and non commited. Exactly how I think Discord would phrase his "I'm not sure." By simply being so confusing that people won't notice his lack of knowledge (and phrased in a way where he can go "told you so." afterwards no matter the outcome.)
I think you do Discord quite well.
6709901
There was a video that I saw once about what entropy was, and it inspired me to make Discord this way. The video stated that information was carried in randomness (chaos/entropy), but that order was needed to make it understandable. Basically, Discord added souls this orderly universe to cause chaos, but in the process, he could learn something that he didn't know about before. And, since in his very first appearance as a statue in season 2, Discord seemed to be able to empower himself on the chaos of the CMC, bringing Lumber Jack's Other to this world likely is a treat for him.
Wait, let me do some google-fu.... Here:
6710031 Well, the video have Micheal Stevens in it so now I have to watch it (even If I already know how entropy works).
You'll start breaking the chapters up into pt1/pt2 once the size gets up towards 10k, right?
Because a 15k chapter is an unwieldy thing.
6710094
I plan on capping it eventually, probably at about 8-9k. It gets unwieldy to write, too. I usually save multi-part chapters for when a conceptual chapter runs long, and I don't anticipate that sort of thing happening very often in this story.
6710511
1) Keep reading.
2) Only if he lets you.
6710538 Bits make the world go round. Applejack could probably talk him into a mutually beneficial arrangement concerning jams
Also, very excited for Timbrek to stroll through Ponyville and all hell break loose. Combined with watchlist status it should be quite the event.
6709901 Your reasoning seems sound to me.
I'm watching and waiting.
Realization. I know what Jack really needs!
thedungeons.com/london/images/main-images/london-ripper.jpg
A Ripper puppet. Large claws. Skilled in stealth tactics.
It would be heresy not to do it.
6716977
I have a list of puppets queued up for him to eventually get. He's on 13 (Taur) while 14 and 15 come as a pair.
However, puppet 16 is the significant one: Crow (or Raven - haven't decided). Crow, as I imagined it, was rather bird-like, with Jack replacing the wings with blades. I could nickname it Ripper.
6717043 why not both? what with Assassin's Creed Syndicate being set in the right sort of time period for Jack the Ripper, and their crew being called the Rooks, why not go for Rook as a name choice? just throwing the idea out there!
6726019 Quit being such a stick in the mud.
6726323
Nothing... yet.
I like the explanation itself, with the Other's soul, the destruction of the original Earth, and Discord's involvement. It's interesting, and creative, and it ties into the other works in this multiverse without being intrusive, unlike the things I pointed out last chapter. Yet at the same time, it felt like a bit of an anticlimax for Discord to just pop up out of nowhere and concisely explain everything in an infodump, especially since he's a character known for being cryptic and unhelpful. Could just be me, but it felt like something of a wasted opportunity, narratively speaking.
I hope the mystery of the flowing stone deer is solved in a less blunt manner.
Hmn. Some sort of hidden, protected tribe? With that touch effect that the pet had, I wonder if Celestia has them locked away for the safety of everyone outside.
Silly tree, the Sun has come personally to judge you.
Huh.
Well, that could have gone much worse. Nobody's dead yet, after all.
Woah, backstory ahoy.
Well now.
6707862 I've never really liked Fim Fiction's policy on Meta stories. I mena, it takes away a lot of creativity for fanfics. I understand that it can become an annoyance and could be dragged on for too long, but that's something that creative artists know how to keep under control. One of the many reasons as to why I tend to get discouraged when I get the idea of writing a fanfic on here. Putting it simply: I don't like unnecessarely restrictive rules that could be more leniant. But hey ,that's my opinion.
6756308 IMO:
Discord is cryptic and unhelpful to ponies, not the little bundles of Chaos known as humans.
Once again, celestia somehow manages to fuck up... Isn't she the princess? Shouldn't she realize how sensitive somet things are?
GOD.
And here I thought I was almost caught up.