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Spike Fanfictions5,586 stories ·2,954 members
Spike the Dragon Stories469 stories ·274 members
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After receiving an urgent letter calling for her help, Ember, Dragon Lord of all dragons, answers the call to aid Spike.
No matter what the problem may be, she knows it can't be so bad.
Right?
*If you are feeling generous you can buy me a Ko-Fi!!
*I personally thank Semaj for his huge help. He is one hell of an editor and teacher*
**Rated Everyone since I think it doesn't earn the Teen degree**
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This is perfect, saying how Spike´s feels about his greed. This is something about what if this is happened with our friends. What should we do?! Thanks for another perfection.
I don't really see what he's feeling so guilty about. He never actually did anything until after that, which is odd in of itself.
In fact it's quite the opposite, he managed to resist, and then he goes all violent for some reason? Why?
Very good! I enjoyed working on this very much!
7207948 Same here, my friend.
7207716
7207749 It isn't about what he did or didn't do. Spike feels they way he does because of what he almost did. I suggest you read it again since I don't want to give the main concept away.
Awesome work as always keep it up poor Spike the guilt is ti much for him. Ember will help!! Im sure of it
Oh my god. In some way, I know how Spike feels. How hard it can be to be different.
Damn! That was powerful and so possible. When, Changelings, are bad, it's such a mind fuck.
Good story!
Loved the relationship's you put everyone in with, Spike. That's the way I like to see it best (Twilight and Spike being friends is still cool too
)!
Ember has that 'No-one-mind-rape-my-mate-and-I'm-going-to-kick-some-Changeling-Ass' look
7207973 Well, I read it again... and my opinion hasn't changed. Call me stubborn. I still think that the logic of a story is completely backwards if guilty feelings make you do something you'd actually feel guilty about. Seriously, attacking his mother? I can't see him ever doing that for something that he never actually did. Another problem is that Ember kinda feels shoved in. Yeah sure, Ember is a good friend, but Spike's never really cared much for race that much so why does a good friend have an easier time getting through to him than the one who raised him?
I guess to sum it up, in my opinion, this oneshot isn't bad, but the concept on which it's named and it's execution kinda makes it fall flat to me.
7208972
From the sounds of it, it'd have to be some "changeling ash," 'cos Spike already took care of that, am I right? Zing!
...
Too soon?
...
I'll get my cloak.
Yay. Much love. Much like. Love it!
7209019 I can see your point. My goal was to explore not the field of what did or not happened, but instead that of what almost happened. From my point of view, Spike is emotionally destroyed for what the changelings did to him and his following willingness to turn his back on Twilight and all the others. He didn't only because it would still be fake and no other reason. That's why he is so unstable to the point where he considers himself as dangerous and unworthy to be near those he loves, but at the same time he doesn't want to be away from them.
But I guess I didn't quite hit the mark.
And about Ember, I included her because they thought that if they couldn't do it then a dragon might be able to help Spike. Who better than Spike's only dragon friend which happens to be the Dragon Lord herself?
This was realy briliant.
*stand up and claps*
Sometimes, the best thing you can do is just listen.
Powerful and thoughtful, well done, Author! A like and fave for you!
7209615
Am I reading this right? He's not feeling guilty about killing but about almost giving up RL for the sake of happy illusion. That's kinda backwards indeed. I mean if I was Spike here I'd have been happy about avoiding the temptation of fake joyful life, and prob. even slightly proud of my strength of character.
And then I'd get a dawning realization of becoming a murderer (also why did he do it anyway?) and then be like "Man, I've messed up bad time here". I mean, geez, it's Spike we are talking about. The little guy who often put himself at risk for others but never really harmed anyone intentionally IIRC.
I guess I am left with more questions than answers.
7209883 Like I said, I think I didn't hit what I was trying to hit. But I'm glad people point out this issues so I can improve next time.
7209928 I thought you hit it pretty well.
7209933
Nice and quaint. Good job.
Superman comic called "For the man who has everything." Superman is attatched to a plant called Black Mercy, which grants you whatever you desire in a dream world, but slowly takes away your life to feed itself. Spike was in the same thing here, but possibly even worse because he wasn't being killed but tempted.
Too real.
Too true.
7209883 And how did he defeat a room full of love-powered changelings? How did he even wake himself up? The changeling mind-control powers seem unbreakable by the victim of them. And Chrysalis beat Celestia single-handedly with that level of love power. This is SPIKE we're talking about here! The FIRE-BREATHING dragon terrified of WOODEN WOLVES that fall apart from a half-powered buck!
And Spike's conflict is left without even an attempt at resolution. It feels like part of a chapter from an unfinished story rather than a self-contained work.
This is also the Spike who knows what Discord did to them all. Discord actually went through with the betrayal. Yet no one mentions the fact that, in the end, Spike REFUSED the offer. He succeeded where Discord failed. He, a little young whelp with a child's mind, was victorious where an ancient and cunning spirit was deceived. It's an obvious comparison which should be brought to his attention if he isn't of sound mind enough to realize it himself.
It doesn't take Ember's lack of experience in social circumstances and emotions much into account either. She'd feel mainly awkward and not even be sure why he was so overwrought in the first place. From her point of view, all that would matter is he won. She's hardened by a very hedonistic dragon culture. She certainly wouldn't start crying herself, not without something that actually impacts her personally enough to matter.
There are so many crucial details lacking to this story fragment.
To paraphrase the Architect from The Matrix. No-one would ever accept a perfect world, they would never be able to believe the illusion because of the harsh reality that life isn't perfect. Why they felt the need to create a perfect reality for him, I'll never know. They should have just created a perfect duplicate of reality, and have his kidnapping written off as a bad dream. If you're going to brainwash someone, do it right *scoffs*
In all seriousness, I didn't like this. It's fine to write a character's breakdown, but without any real build up (we didn't see the false reality, or bear witness to Spike discovering the truth, nor did we see his moral dilemma unfold) I couldn't get emotionally invested. I realize what I might be asking falls out of the purview of a one-shot (what I proposed could easily cover 20k words, at least), but as much as I like Spike, I just can't say I like this story.
*Claps for about a minute*
Great job.
This was... not so great. People are already talking about the story, so I won't touch on that too much here, except where it touches on my main complaint: the characters. That is to say, what characters? It felt like you completely sacrificed any and all personality, for the sake of... I haven't even figured out what it was for the sake of.
From the start, I was put off by Ember's very formal and articulate way of speaking. "Speaking of which"? "Nonsense"? "My dear friend"? They didn't feel... Ember. What happened to the rough-edged, good-hearted, boisterous and bold but somewhat-shy dragon from the show? There wasn't a drop of that in the way she acted around the ponies. I had hoped it'd get better, or at least bearable, when we got to the meat of the story, but that didn't happen. There, she stopped even being a facsimile of a character, and just became a tool for Spike's dialogue, just a literary device to nudge him into the responses you wanted him to have. It could have been literally any character in that position, there was nothing in there that was Ember. Just a sounding board for Spike.
On Spike himself... I mean, you tried to add more emotion to his dialogue, but it takes more than a bit of stuttering to do that, you know? Spike was also kind of just a tool. He existed to talk about his feelings. But it never seemed he felt them. Again, it's more than just stutters. First the emotions needed to be conveyed without that, and then the stuttering could emphasize it - but it doesn't carry it on its own. He really comes across as... detached. It's all very clinical and precise. None of his words felt like they had any emotion, and when it's all about emotion, that's a big problem. Y'know the old axiom, 'Show, don't tell'? It applies to dialogue, too. You can say he was 'crying out in a pathetic manner', but not only is that kind of a piss-poor descriptor that also suffers from your tendency to verbose , formal language where it doesn't belong, if nothing he's saying ever seems to carry that feeling, it doesn't really matter how pathetic you tell me it is, I don't feel it. Show, don't tell. Have Spike feel it, don't tell me he's feeling it, and especially don't have him tell me how he's feeling without showing it.
Characters are the backbone of any story. Whether you're building a world and events around them, or a world and events are shaping them, they're both the central part of, and our own eyes into, the story. They should never simply be the vehicle for the story you want to tell; they have to be involved, active, and alive. I didn't get any of that here. The only time I could pick a character out just by the way the spoke were the one-off lines by the Mane Six, and that just felt... intentional, even forced, rather than a result of the characters being the characters. Nothing felt alive, nothing felt like it had emotion, and in a story that's all about emotion, that's a huge problem. Sorry, but I cannot like this story as it is.
7210489 It may be that changelings cannot create a realistic illusion if their intent is to feed on their host's good feelings. If changelings cannot or will not digest bad emotions, then they are forced to create an idyllic reality where their victim is always happy and full of love in order to satiate their hunger.
I imagine under normal circumstances (i.e., a pony) they just move on to another host if they can't convince them to accept the dream. Maybe they didn't think Spike was capable of fighting back due to his small size and paid the ultimate price for trying to tempt a fire-breathing dragon?
This was... Okay. I feel that it could have been done better. While you tried to add emotion to it, it didn't get it's full glory. I also feel that some of the characters were out of character, like Twilight, for example. When Ember entered the throne room, I would've expected Twilight to be pacing. There is room for improvement, and it didn't quite hit the feels enough. Also, this story leaves a lot of questions. For example, why did Spike let Ember in and no one else? Because they were the same species? Like I said, it could've been done better.
This...doesn't even feel like a complete story; more like the hook to the start of a series about Spike growing up, or something. Although, it does seem to fall flat for me on that as well.
7210538, 7209883, and 7210242 sum up well what I thought. I really like the concept here, of something emotionally and mentally scarring happening to Spike, and seeing his journey, or at least the start of one, to grow beyond that moment, with help from Ember. However...the story itself just plunked all the wrong notes for me.
Short, but alright.
I think this is a very unique story. While Spike's guilt may seem melodramatic, it also showed that there is no silver bullet to things like trauma.
Sometimes, you can't know how to help someone . You just have to be there for them.
I think that's a pretty good moral.
7210661
I feel like this is a good example of weighing short term benefit against long term gain, a fundamentally difficult argument, and one I'm not going to participate in without all the facts. We simply don't know enough about changelings, and I very much doubt the show is going to either a) show them again, at least not for a while and b) go too in depth as to changeling biology.
7210242
It's a short story, and the level of detail to include is up to the author. Does it make sense for Spike to tell everything to his friends and family? Of course not (with the possible exception of RD); he doesn't want them to worry about him actually betraying them if he tells them he'd seriously considered it. Does it make sense for Spike to tell everything to Ember? Again, no, because by this point he'd beaten himself up over it for several weeks and is just exhausted. He'll talk when he's ready.
7210489 My belief is that they didn't create the perfect reality, but the cocoons have something in them that senses what an individual would deem a perfect reality and then projects that. Spike's still a baby dragon and was under a lot of stress, and as a result his perception is different than, say, Fluttershy's would be. Fact is, no one really knows what changelings can or can't do. We only have two episodes to draw from.
Great story. But, I sense a disturbance....a conclusive finale perhaps?
7211900
Nah. I'd say it's perfect as it is.
The ending really sells the rest of the story.
I guess it's my own fault. I didn't write it with my heart on it, and I apologieze for making this a not so enjoyable experience. Sadly, I don't have the will to extend this idea further. But I can promise to never make this mistake again and that my next stories will be much better.
Until then!
This was great!
7211563 But we have NOTHING to go on. This is a SCENE from a story, not a complete story in itself. Nothing is resolved, little is set up, characterization is incomplete.
A good short story must take great pains and planning to satisfy all the requirements of a complete story in a very limited space.
Were you even paying attention?
Your dialogue for anyone other than Twilight and Luna was trite, forced, and uncharacteristic. Additionally, stories like this require a resolution. You've written a wonderful vignette, a scene, but the more interesting part would be the 30k words that it takes for Spike to recover. I like the concept, but this is something other writers tackle all the time: Spike's Identity crisis. However you could certainly bring something new to the table.
Don't feel too guilty, (HAH) I've had a stinker reach the feature box even though it was rather well received. The comments tore me to shreds but the ratings were overwhelmingly positive. It's well written (the prose is, anyway.) but lacking substance. However, you've said you don't want to revisit this and I respect that. My story, I'm Not Either, would also be too draining to readdress.
And there's your problem.
7212680 And what exactly are the requirements that make something a story? It depends on how specific you want to get, after all. I see a beginning, a middle, and an end. I see conflict, and resolution of conflict. That makes it a story.
Mind you, not every conflict is resolved in this. The conflict of Spike having no one to talk to, however, is resolved.
Which still makes this better than that overrated piece of plotless garbage known as The Catcher in the Rye.
You need to get this narrated on YouTube.
7213500 "Spike has no one to talk to" isn't a conflict, it's a plot point. It's a fact about the setup of this story. The emotional conflict in the story is what exactly Spike is *going through.* It is almost the entirety of the setup of the story (in fact, he has plenty of people to talk to, he just doesn't want to because of emotional turmoil.) And the exposition that he gives to Ember seems to be in service to that emotional conflict.
With the way the story is set up, I took it to be a story about Spike's emotions, and the resolution of the story wasn't satisfying to me because I felt like it wasn't really addressed.
7214131 That pretty much sums it up, my friend.
Why the hell is there still not an Ember tag
For most of the story I thought when he broke free from the changelings they transformed into his friends to avoid being attacked and he still killed them all; the pain and guilt of murdering and ripping apart the image of his loved ones would have made more sense for the GUILT; but here he actually resisted and didn't gave up his friends for a lie, he actually managed to do the right thing (besides off-ing his captors)... So I sorta don't get why he went THAT bonkers over it. Even the illusion where the changelings had him trapped in making him not being able to disern the reality from a lie would have made more sense; when he was rescued he wouldn't have been able to tell if these were actually his real friends or changellings trying mess him up (more), therefore isolating himself and attacking everyone out of the insecurity of not knowing if they were friends or foes... But that's just me.
7214319
I for one already welcome our new Dragon(over)lord.
I second the ember tag.
I really liked the whole story, but it feels unfinished. It just kind of, ends. It's jarring, and kind of hurts the story as a whole. What happens next?
Such a good story
It should have a part 2 to show spikes recovery
There is an Ember tag now.
I love this story
yet so great 
Its so sad
I do hope there might be sequal ,cause I really want to see the ponies reactions to what Spike told Ember
And I like how Spike ripped the changelings to shredd's