II-IX. Twilight's Madness
Twilight anxiously paced over the Golden Oak Library's floor, holding her chin and frowning in concentration. It was Saturday evening, and she and Spike were wrapping up their work for the week so that they could take tomorrow off.
However, something was missing. Twilight was certain that there was something important, something that she needed to do, but just couldn't remember.
Spike sat at the library's writing-desk, quill in hand, turned towards Twilight as he awaited her instructions.
After Twilight had changed directions about half a dozen times in her nervous trek across the hollowed oak tree's diameter, she looked to Spike and said, "We've taken inventory?"
"Yep," Spike replied, nodding at a checked item on his list.
"Hmm," Twilight said, continuing her walk. "We've done this week's book repairs?"
"Yep."
"Shipped our trades with other libraries?"
"Yep."
"Mailed all the overdue notices?"
Spike smirked. "Rainbow delivered them personally," he said with an air of complete confidence.
Twilight nodded, then kept walking. "Maybe we needed to chop some firewood...?" she softly suggested to herself.
Spike shook his head. "Already took care of that last week, remember, Twi?"
Spike placed his quill back down, rolled his parchment up, and closed his inkwell, adding as he did so, "Relax, Twilight. We've already gone over the list like three times. Maybe you're just overthinking things; but even if you did forget something, I'm sure it'll come back to you eventually."
Twilight shook her head. "No...." she insisted. "It was really important, and I need to do it...!"
Spike sighed wearily. "It's gonna be fine, Twi," he assured her. "If it's really that important, I'm sure we can do it tomorrow."
Twilight softly nodded, but she still couldn't shake her anxiety. This elusive and critical task, whatever it was, was definitely urgent; Twilight had the feeling that it might not be able to wait until tomorrow....
Then it hit her. Twilight gasped, spun around, and cried to Spike, "Have we sent intel to Celestia yet?!"
Spike blinked, then realization dawned upon him. "Aah," he said. "You're right; we did forget about that."
There was a moment of panic within Twilight. How could she have forgotten? It was why she and Spike were there running the library in Avalon in the first place. Celestia's mission. That was the all-important duty she had neglected to attend to that week.
Twilight's first and foremost job was to collect as much field intelligence regarding the potential activity of radical cults to Dark Gods for the High Princess as she could possibly find. She mentally berated herself for somehow letting her field assignment slip away from the forefront of her consciousness, and accusingly demanded of herself that she explain how it happened.
To be fair, Twilight thought, it had been a crazy week. Not only had she and Spike had to change out their wardrobes and furnishings around their home to prepare it for the rest of the autumn, but they also had had to tutor the Cutie Mark Crusaders, having promised to aid them in their educational struggles (particularly since they were still recovering from a recent highly traumatic event). In addition, Twilight had personally advised Mayor Meyer in recommending and sending requests for children's psychological councilors from Olympus and Athens so that the mental and emotional damage Scorpan had caused them could be effectively treated. To top all this off, since most of their friends now believed that they were a couple, Spike and Twilight were forced to continue playing the role of secret, illicit lovers for them, which was made even more difficult by the fact that they also had to continue keeping their acted romance a secret from everyone who didn't know; particularly Applejack. Twilight and Spike strongly suspected that, at best, Applejack would not take the knowledge of their extremely illegal and taboo pretend presumably sexual relationship well, especially considering the fact that Spike was still underage. Twilight gave Applejack better-than-even odds of immediately reporting her to law enforcement in the event she found out about it.
And Twilight had to do all this, of course, while continuing to run the Golden Oak Library.
Honestly, Twilight was beginning to grow extremely sick of this whole charade. She was quite honest by nature, and it was ridiculously exhausting to have to lie to her friends all the time, and to make up reasons for the odd behavior she and Spike displayed. If you tell the truth, Celestia had once said to her, you don't have to remember anything. One of the best proverbs she's ever written, Twilight thought. And that was saying something.
But the absolute worst part about this whole thing was undoubtedly the unending theatrical act that was her counterfeit romance with Spike. It wasn't even an entire month since Twilight's apprentice had been struck with the (admittedly brilliant) idea of telling their friends that they were engaged in a courtship of forbidden love, and she had already decided that she had indulged in quite more than enough playing the part.
It wasn't because Twilight was disgusted or repelled by Spike. Quite the opposite, actually. The problem wasn't that she was repulsed every time she had to shove her tongue down his throat or allow him to stroke her thighs in front of their friends, because she wasn't; indeed, the problem was that she liked it. In fact, she liked it far too much.
Twilight was enduring the astonishingly paradoxical agony of being tortured by pleasure. Even before they began masquerading as a couple, it took an enormous amount of self-control for Twilight not to give Spike any response whenever he made an advance at her; giving him an inch would only encourage him further, which would only make her more likely to give in and indulge him. Twilight also didn't have it in her heart to chew Spike out for so flippantly suggesting that they commit a felonious crime together; after all, she would have gladly ignored the laws against student-teacher fraternization during her own tenure as Cadance's apprentice. The only reason that, as Cadance's apprentice, Twilight didn't attempt to forge a romance with her mentor and former babysitter, was that Shining was Cadence's boyfriend. Twilight couldn't live with herself if she had facilitated and aided her brother's lover in betraying him.
In Twilight's eyes, were Shining not taken into account, she could have become Cadance's lover without putting any weight on her own conscience whatsoever- at least at the time. However, with the positions reversed between herself and Spike, Twilight could no longer break that law and truthfully say she was still at peace with herself; after all, when Twilight was Cadance's apprentice, it was only Twilight who was underage. If the two of them had engaged in sexual activity while studying together, Twilight would not have been considered a criminal; she would have been considered a victim. Twilight would have fiercely defended Cadance in the event their hypothetical illicit affair came to light, and insisted that it would have been entirely consensual on her own part. Now, however, Twilight was deeply ashamed of having seriously entertained such an idea, and was extremely glad that she didn't go through with it; if she had, it would have likely caused Cadance a great amount of stress, regardless of whether or not Twilight's feelings were returned by her. It would have potentially forever ruined their entire relationship, as Cadance would have been forced to reject and push her away like Twilight was afraid she would soon be forced to do to Spike.
The worst part about this, however, was that Twilight was forced to bear this burden entirely on her own. She had no one she could confide her deeply repressed intense carnal desire for Spike in; she couldn't tell Spike, obviously, since he would certainly immediately attempt to seduce her, and have a significant chance at succeeding. She couldn't tell her friends, since they already believed they were illegally intimate, and exposing this as a lie would increase the pressure on her to reveal the truth of her mission from Celestia.
Twilight considered writing to Cadance and Shining about it, but immediately abandoned the idea when she realized this would mean confessing her feelings to Cadance and straining their relationships with Shining and each other. She considered telling Celestia, but decided against it almost as quickly when she realized that Celestia might then remove Spike from her tutelage to defend him from potential endangerment. She considered telling Luna, but immediately realized that the utterly uninhibited Moon Goddess would definitely encourage her to act on it and not worry about the potential ethical violations or adverse consequences that might come of it.
Twilight didn't think she'd ever been so constantly stressed out before in her life. She could handle stress, but not this much. Honestly, the fact that she hadn't made a report to Celestia that week was just one too many of the things on her mind. It was the final straw on the camel's back, and the camel's knees were beginning to slowly buckle beneath the weight.
Twilight's eye faintly twitched, causing Spike to wince with anxiety. "Uh... are you alright, Twilight?" he said concernedly.
Twilight swallowed. "We..." she muttered, "... we haven't... sent a report... this week...?"
Spike slid off of his chair and placed a comforting hand on Twilight's shoulder. "Twi, it's alright," he said reassuringly. "I mean, we can't decide when we'll find more intel, right? Why don't we just write a letter to Celestia explaining that this week's report might be a little late?"
Twilight's eyes widened, then she turned abruptly on Spike, who flinched away slightly from her hysterical expression. "Our report might be late?!" she cried. "Spike, our report can't be late! We have to help Celestia with her mission! We have to give her something!"
"And we will," Spike said with a soft, soothing tone. "But it's not the end of the world if we can't get a report to Celestia on time this once, right?"
"It very well might be the end of the world, Spike!" Twilight shouted, tightly gripping her head between her palms with panic. "The dark Gods are getting unsealed, Spike! Do you know what this means?!"
"Of course I do," Spike replied, raising his voice a little. "But we've been alright so far, right? Besides, like Celestia said, she-"
"Celestia said we have to stop whoever's doing this!" Twilight cried. "What if they unseal another God, Spike?! What if they make an ally of that God, Spike?!"
"I'm sure Celestia can stop them," Spike said, trying desperately to remain calm. "She's beaten them before, and she can beat them again."
"We almost didn't beat Scorpan, Spike!" Twilight retorted. "And the other five Sealed Gods will only be even smarter and stronger than him! We have no idea what they'll do! What if Celestia can't beat them?! What if they join the cult that unsealed them to release more dark Gods?!"
"Twilight-!" Spike shouted in a frail attempt to interrupt her.
Twilight's pupils were the size of pinpricks and she was shaking with terror. "They might overthrow Celestia! They might unseal Discord!! And if they unseal Discord, then all is lost! Our forsaken world will be engulfed in FLAMES!! Civilization as we know it will DIE, and ALL BEINGS WILL LIVE IN ENDLESS TORMENT UNTIL THE VERY END OF TIME!!"
Tears welled in Twilight's eyes as she curled up, toppled to the floor, and began sobbing and whimpering while continuing to tremble.
With deep concern and worry for his friend, Spike knelt down and gently stroked Twilight's cheek, wiping away some of her tears with his palm. "Twilight, please...!" he anxiously pleaded. "Please calm down, Twi! You're gonna go into serious shock or something! You've got to calm. Down!"
Twilight made a few small, shallow gasps, gazing up from her tightly-gripped legs at spike with wide, bloodshot eyes.
Spike gently lifted Twilight into an upright sitting position, wiped some more of her tears away, then pulled her into a gentle, comforting embrace. "It's alright, Twi..." he whispered, slowly stroking her back beneath her hair. "You're safe... it's gonna be alright...."
Twilight sniffed, was still for a moment, then tremblingly sighed as she closed her eyes and returned Spike's embrace.
After consolingly holding Twilight for a few moments, Spike stood up, helped Twilight onto her feet, then suggested cheerfully, "I think we should call it a day. Why don't you take a bath, Twi? That should help you relax a little."
Twilight nodded. "Yes, that... that sounds like a good idea, Spike...." she muttered feebly.
Spike gave her a reassuring pat on the shoulder, then scaled up the stairs to their bedroom. "I'll be reading. Take as long as you like!" he called back before closing the door.
Twilight gazed at the shut bedroom door for a few moments. Spike really was rather amazing. She couldn't be any luckier to have him as an apprentice, really.
Once Twilight had drawn herself a hot bath in the library's bathroom, she locked the door before stripping down and placing her clothes in the room's woven wicker laundry bin. However, before she stepped into the tub, she went to the latched carrying-case that held her makeup kit. After flipping its steel latches open, she unfolded the top and gazed inside.
Spike found it a little odd that Twilight had an entire large makeup kit; after all, though she was a girl and occasionally wore it, such occasions were few and far between. He wouldn't have been surprised to see such a case under the ownership of Rarity, Fluttershy, or even perhaps Pinkie Pie; those three girls were fashion-conscious and knew how to dress and make themselves up formally. However, unlike them, Twilight didn't seem to much care about improving her appearance; though she was undeniably very pretty, any of the days that she wasn't wearing her usual sneakers, t-shirt, jeans, and miniskirt were few and far between. Wearing makeup was even rarer for her, being reserved only for very formal events such as Rainbow Dash's recent accolade, weddings, and the like. By all accounts, Twilight shouldn't need an entire case of makeup, considering how infrequently and minimally she used it.
In the end, though, Spike decided that girls and their makeup was just something he'd never get before promptly forgetting about it. He never guessed that his puzzlement at Twilight's case was entirely correct.
Taking a deep breath, Twilight channeled Ether into two of the screws in the bottom of the case, causing them to faintly glow violet as they twisted themselves out. She then telekinetically lifted out the case's false bottom, revealing a secret compartment. Lying within it, resting in a bed of insulating foam, was a highly-detailed and realistic hand-blown glass dildo.
Twilight didn't use this often; she was usually content to pleasure herself manually. However, when her desire to indulge in an accurate recreation of one of her fantasies reached its peak, she would call upon this marble-like glass toy towards that end.
Now was one of those times.
Twilight stepped into the hot water of her tub, sat down, then laid her legs outward as she wearily leaned back against the tub's head. She closed her eyes as she gently lowered her right hand and toy beneath the bathwater's surface, conjuring up an image of her young apprentice.
Twilight was weighed down by no small amount of guilt over this; after all, not only was Spike her student, but he was also barely twelve years old. Furthermore, he looked still younger than that, which only made Twilight's shame at her attraction to him all the more intense. As brilliant and wise beyond his years as he was, Spike was still a child. How could Twilight possibly justify harboring such a deep carnal desire for him, even knowing that she'd been discouraged from entering a mixed-gender apprenticeship in the first place for this very reason?
However, as much as she beat herself up over it, Twilight had to admit that it at least made sense that she found Spike so desirable; after all, he was very attractive. Not only did he have an inherently adorable size and build, but he was also extremely handsome. This was not just a result of his maddeningly good-looking face and sweet, enormous green eyes; his slender little body was also surprisingly toned and muscular, which made him a nearly impossible-to-resist treat for the eyes whenever he removed his shirt. Twilight entirely blamed Sunset for this; after all, she had worked very hard to stay in shape and retain her supermodel figure, which drove her to very intense self-exertion as she trained for school athletics at the Olympus Magic Academy. Because Sunset and Spike had been nearly-inseparable, Spike had joined Sunset in all of the workouts of her training routine, firmly entrenching within himself a habit of daily exercise that he continued even to that day. The only mortal girl that Twilight could think of who could rival Sunset's beauty was Fluttershy; because of her, Twilight was sure that the little brother following in her footsteps would likewise grow to rival even Shining Armor.
Especially after hearing of Sunset's descriptions of him, Twilight was sure that Spike looked just like his dad. Prometheus had been painted by his daughter as being extraordinarily handsome, to the point that he might well have been able to seduce even the likes of Goddesses and other men. Twilight could already see Spike himself beginning to make true to these claims; she had observed others' reactions to him, and had seen that even Fluttershy seemed to have a mild crush on him, and that Applejack was uncomfortable around him in a way that she didn't seem to be around any other men.
No matter how guilty she felt about it, Twilight couldn't deny that the idea of defiling her bed while holding Spike in her arms was absolutely blissful. She imagined just that; she pictured that the pressure between her legs was Spike himself as she clamped her left hand over her own mouth to muffle her shuddering whimpers and moaning screams.
When she was finished, Twilight slumped down further into the water, submerging herself until only her face and ears were still surfaced. She then draped both of her arms over the tubs' edges, letting them dangle loosely at her sides.
"I really need to get laid...." Twilight muttered, frowning up at the ceiling.
After a minute or so of still relaxation and deep, heavy breathing, Twilight sat up, magically heated her bath back up a bit, then soaped herself down and washed her hair. Once she'd rinsed herself off, Twilight dried herself, put on her pajamas, then took a long drink of water at the bathroom's sink before washing and replacing her dildo in her makeup case's secret compartment. She hid it so that Spike wouldn't accidentally stumble upon it; though she doubted it would happen, Twilight didn't dare to imagine what Spike would do if he did....
Once Twilight brushed her teeth, she exited the bathroom to find Spike lounging on one of the library's armchairs while reading the newest volume of Clockmoon. "Your turn, Spike," Twilight said. She then muttered while scaling up the stairs to their bedroom, "I'm gonna go to bed. 'Night."
"'Night," Spike replied with a brief, smiling glance in Twilight's direction before returning his attention to his comic.
Twilight's cheek and the palms of her hands were pressed up against something cold and smooth. Her eyes fluttered open, and she saw that she was lying against a polished white marble floor.
Confused, Twilight sat up, looking around at her surroundings. She soon recognized it; it was Camelot's throne room, and she had been sleeping on the stone floor before one of Celestia's beautiful stained-glass windows.
"How'd I end up here?" Twilight muttered tiredly as she rubbed her eyes. She could have sworn that she had just been at the Golden Oak Library in Avalon....
Twilight looked towards the hall's end, where she saw the two thrones of Equestria's princesses; Celestia's elegant golden seat, as well as Luna's stern iron chair. From behind them, however, Twilight could see the recognizable celestial patterns in the High Princess's multi-colored hair, flowing freely as they always did.
"Celestia...?" Twilight muttered as she stood up onto her feet. "Your Highness...?"
Celestia didn't respond, however. Growing a bit concerned, Twilight cautiously stepped closer to the regal thrones.
"Princess? What... what is going on?" Twilight said, her voice nearly breaking a few times.
Still, silence.
When Twilight reached the throne, she stopped. She wasn't sure why; after all, Celestia was surely standing just behind it, but a strange, terrible sense of dread and foreboding had suddenly overtaken Twilight.
Tightly closing her eyes and clenching her hands into fists, Twilight took a few deep breaths, opened her eyes, and placed her hands over the throne's edge. She slowly, slowly peeked around it, tremendously fearful at what she would see....
However, she soon saw Celestia's ear, as well as the side of her cheek. With a relieved sigh, Twilight stepped out completely, saying, "Thank goodness. Hello, Your Highness, there's-"
However, Twilight froze as she saw: it was just Celestia's head. On a pike.
The fractured seconds of Twilight's paralyzed terror felt like an eternity. Celestia's head was severed roughly from her body, as though as someone had ripped it off. The pike it was mounted on had been thrust into the stone floor, leaving rubble and splitting a large crack in its wake. But worst of all, blood was slowly dripping from the High Princess's head down the shaft and onto the floor, creating a small puddle at its foot.
Once Twilight regained her mobility, she let out a shriek of horror before running to the head's front. It would have been disturbing enough to see her mentor's eyes dull and her mouth agape with lifelessness, but even that wasn't as horrible as what she saw: Celestia's eyes were wide, frantic, and gazing fearfully at Twilight, and her mouth was sloppily sewn shut, as though she were desperately trying to shout at her to run, but was unable to.
Before Twilight could say another word, however, a sound rang across the hall. It was low and soft, but chillingly cruel and menacing; it was the sadistic laughter of a moderately-aged man.
After the voice had chuckled in its terrible glee for a few moments, it began to speak. "My dear, dear Twilight...." it said.
"W-who are you?!" Twilight cried. "How... how do you know my name?!"
"Whatever do you mean?" the voice replied in false confusion. "It's only natural that I would know your name, is it not? After all, you are an extension of me...."
Twilight held her head and turned away, scrunching her eyes closed. "N-...no!" she cried. "No, that...! That can't be true-!"
"Oh, but you know it to be true, poor little Elf...." the voice continued. "As unpleasant as it might be to realize, you are no different from any other Being."
Twilight's eyes widened. Though she had been covering her ears to block out that cruel, horrible voice, she still heard it perfectly clearly. "Are you saying...?" she began, lowering her hands again. "... Are you saying that... that all Beings are a part of you...?"
"Naturally," the voice laughed. "Not only all Beings, but all things are merely a piece of my own will and power..."
"That doesn't make any sense!" Twilight cried.
"Make sense?" the voice said, once again faking shock. "Oh, but what fun is there in making sense?"
The voice burst into laughter once again, and Twilight turned fearfully back to face the hall. "Who are you?!" she shouted angrily. "Show yourself!"
"I'm afraid I can't, darling," the voice replied. "Can you see something that is both everywhere and nowhere?"
"Shut up!" Twilight shouted. "I know you're here! What have you done to the Princess?!"
"Why, nothing," the voice replied with a tone of mock offense. "I haven't laid a finger on her...."
"Liar!" Twilight barked. "You sewed her mouth shut!"
"Ah, but you are mistaken...." the voice said. "Of course, to someone like me, not only have I done as you say, but I am now doing it. Time is, after all, an illusion. But as far as you are concerned, it is not that I have done it.
"No. It's that in time, I will do it."
A force that Twilight could not see or detect suddenly jerked her from her position, causing her to scream in surprise as an invisible entity dragged her down the hall. It then suddenly stopped about halfway down, then turned her forcefully towards one of the windows: a depiction of a Human, an Angel, and an Elf screaming in agony as they were dangled over a blazing fire from marionette puppet strings. The crossed wooden handles were being gripped by a black, winged humanoid silhouette; an image that all Beings knew since childhood; a nightmarish man-shaped darkness with a blood-red right eye, a flame-golden left eye, and an unnaturally wide, crescent-shaped, fanged smile....
The eyes of the stained glass depiction of Discord, the God of Chaos and Lord of the Cosmos, looked up to gaze at Twilight.
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This. This is the kind of twispike-ness I’ve been looking for.
oh this is getting good, could twilight be in fact a child of discord? or something else,
8538061 From your MLP:FiM fanfics in general, or this one specifically?
8538139
Both. Well done :) definitely one of my favorite chapters so far.
Dang, not only does she have to deal with all that inner turmoil from her daily routine to her newfound feelings, now she has to deal with this crap? When will things settle down for this poor girl?
Also I have to comment on that one part earlier. Does she really believe Spike of all people would take advantage of her? Damn.
Twilight unfulfilled feelings for Spike will break her.
That was...something
Took me a while to notice you'd uploaded a new chapter. All I have to say is I like how Twilight is beating herself for her perverseness. It shows she has a lot more self-control than many other characters in fiction.
8564287 Can you tell which one specifically this one is based off of?
You wish it were just Fire. Discord is FAR more creative and dangerous than that in CANON. SO here...
Discord.
8566216
Can't say I know enough actual Yanderes, save for the protag of Yandere Simulator to do so, so, sadly no.
8567954 It's actually based on Yasami from Audition.
8570209
Never heard of it.
I could have sworn that I had commented on this chapter already.
Yeesh, Twilight's got a lot of baggage. And usually characters just need to get over their hangups and talk it out, but she's not wrong about not really having good options.
Well. After running into you in a group forum, checking out your work pages, deciding to read this story, and finally actually reading it, I can comment! And comment I shall. I kind of hope there's a limit to the number of characters I can type, otherwise this is going to be looooooooooong.
I can't technically review this story, because it isn't finished yet, but I feel like I've seen enough to provide a definitive opinion on it.
And my opinion is:
I hate it. I hate your style of writing, it is so boring, and I don't like reading this story.
Which is why it's annoying that I also like it. It is a whole world, with interesting characters, and there are times when the story is just genuinely good. Not often, but there are times.
I'd also like to point out that your title and description both do things that annoy me, which seems strange with one only being three letters long.
Before I really rip into this story, I'd like to talk about some things I do like.
Mostly it comes down to the ideas present, which if it weren't for the FiM trappings, could pretty well stand on their own. Celestia and the other ultra-powerful characters being gods, a world full of mostly liberated beings with just a few sects of stodgy traditionalists, a cult loosing dark gods upon the world- yeah, all sounds pretty cool.
At first I wasn't happy that you made Rainbow a lesbian, because that idea has been done to death, but your take on her as the descendant of two gods which explains both her badassery and her attractiveness is really cool. It only seems to confirm a theory I have, which I'll explain now.
While I'm not a fan of making Spike into a badass, it's because it's usually done at the expense of the mane 6, shoving them aside or even turning them into wimps. Here, it's more like he's on equal footing with them, only being slightly weaker due to age. It's done well, though he suffers from the same issues as everyone else, which I'll get to later.
Sunset being his sister was the first thing that truly stood out as odd to me; both the fact that the two totally unrelated characters in FiM were now family (seriously, have they ever even interacted in Equestria Girls? The dragon Spike, not the dog Spike that lives with SciTwi.), and also the fact that Sunset is a recognized person in this universe. I don't dislike it, but in general I'm ambivalent to the two's backstory.
The theory I have, which is something that will keep me reading in spite of my overall dislike because I have to know, is that Spike and Sunset are somehow Celestia's children, and Prometheus is the cult leader, and he abducted Sunset to join him. The comparisons between Spike and Sunset and Rainbow are there to be made, but as you're the author, I don't think I have to list them all. Suffice to say, I wouldn't call it an official theory unless I felt there was enough evidence. Like, I'd put this on TV Tropes under WMG.
I do also like the fight scenes. Whenever you write fight scenes, everything else just seems to melt away, leaving behind clear and pristine pieces of beauty. Which is why it sucks that there's only a few.
Overall, I liked the Scorpan arc. It was better than anything in Book 1, including the Nightmare Moon bits. Fittingly, Scorpan seemed like more of a threat; his fight against Rainbow and subsequent defeat also made more sense than Luna's change of heart. His plan was also surprisingly effective in that I didn't think it would be possible to defeat him with force. I thought they'd have to get Luna to pretend to be Nightmare Moon in order to trick him with a second dark god, or something like that.
Mostly what I like about this story is the basic concept. Taking FiM and turning it into a massive sword-and-sorcery epic sounds really cool; I've seen plenty of pictures of human versions of the characters all dressed up as Dungeons and Dragons classes or whatever; there's an account on
DevianDevienthat one website for fan art and stuff that does beautiful work.However.
We now have to go over what I don't like. And there is a lot.
First and foremost, I don't think this is high fantasy. It is definitely a fantasy setting. Compared to our real world, it's super fantastical. But compared to the actual show, it seems a step down.
Both feature a world that is definitely not Earth as we know it, populated by multiple intelligent species, in which a group of heroes confront powerful dangers and save the world. The scales are tipped against them a bit more in this world- okay, a lot more- but really that's about the only difference. FiM even seems like it could be heading towards the 'over-arching Big Bad' idea, what with the similarities between Nightmare Moon, Sombra, and The Pony of Shadows.
FiM, by season 2 episode 9, had actually done more to expand its world than this story has. In this story, we have yet to travel outside of three places: Avalon and the surrounding areas, Camelot/Olympus, and Asgard. There are only 4 intelligent species shown (maybe 5, if Discord is counted as his own). And the problems, including the returning gods, seem centered on Avalon.
In FiM, we've been to a couple more places. We've been to Canterlot, Ponyville plus the surrounding areas, Cloudsdale, a bit of Manehattan in a flashback, a bit of the rock farm the same way, and Appleoosa. We've also seen more intelligent species- dragons, earth ponies, pegasi, unicorns, alicorns, buffalo, mules as a joke but very real, zebras, griffons, diamond dogs, and again possibly Discord. That's a count of 11. Oh- Stephen Magnet, sea serpents, that's 12.
And as for the problems, in FiM they did always cluster towards Ponyville, but the cause-and-effect seems reversed. In FiM it seems the problems come to Ponyville because that's where the mane 6 are, or because Ponyville is in a convenient location (near the Everfree Forest, which contains the Castle where Starswirl lived with the princesses, which also happens to sit above the Tree of Harmony, and also not too far from the gates of Tartarus). In this story, things come to Avalon because... reasons, and then Twilight came there, and then Twilight stayed, and things just conveniently keep coming to her. There hasn't been a lot of questing or anything.
Also, aside from a brief mention of Scorpan's buyers coming from all over the land, the problems in this story don't seem to extend beyond Avalon. I'm not saying FiM does it better, but they seem about equal, and the scale of this series should be bigger than FiM.
I'd like to compare it to the highest fantasy series I know about- which is not actually Lord of the Rings, because that franchise never interested me. No, I'm going to compare it to a series- three, actually- of chapter books technically written for younger audiences. However, they're so dark and full of lore that they can't really be understood until you look at them through the eyes of an adult. Deltora Quest. They, too, take place in a world that is not Earth, full of magic and monsters. The series is also a proper franchise, having spin-offs, sequels, video games, and an anime adaptation that I mean to check out someday soon. The Deltora books truly fill out a world, with so many small details, and the heroes traveling all over the place. They contain at least 7 sapient/sentient species, plus numerous intelligent monsters that represent entire species, plus mention is made of at least one intelligent species that humans drove to extinction (capricorns, I think). The problems also effect the entire world of Deltora, and we see numerous ways how. It is a world that is as rich and vibrant as it is horrifying, and I love it.
Compared to that, your boast of “high fantasy” seems hollow.
And then there's the sex.
Okay, I'm an adult. I can handle sex. I can even be fairly mature about it. But this? Seriously? This is excessive. It seems like almost every chapter has something sexual happening that the audience is made uncomfortably aware of. Oh ho, somebody's gettin' laid! He-he, they're masturbating! Oh, it's so clever and real!
No.
I'm not advocating for a Sonatan, pure-chaste world. Sex can be fine. It can be used to explore a character, to show off what they're like at their core. But the way it's used here just seems fundamentally wrong. And not in a 'sick and wrong' way, either. I can handle some extremely fucked up shit. I've read Celestia's Relaxing Vacation by Headless Rainbow. I dare you to get past the, oh, third chapter? It gets real fucked, real fast. So no, I'm not opposed to incest, or rape, or hermaphrodites, or BDSM, or necrophilia, or foalcon, or pretty much anything (to be clear, I'm saying that reading about it doesn't bother me. I am very much opposed to most of those in real life. Herms and BDSM are okay, since they're consensual things. Usually).
But the sex in this story seems gratuitous when it isn't the point of the story. This isn't porn. Why does it matter if Twilight masturbates, or if Rainbow goes to Avalon's gay bar every-other night? Do those things impact their decisions in the story? I haven't noticed an example of that so far. And it's brought up so often. I don't even care anymore about everyone being gay for Rainbow, because it doesn't matter. She doesn't bang any of her friends, and her hitting on them doesn't seem to effect the story, so why is the gayngst brought up all the time?
And not even just within the main group- I know the CMC's are coming of age in this world, and they're discovering themselves (especially Apple Bloom), but I don't understand how that relates back to the overall story or how their individual story arcs were advanced by the three chapters spent working on the clubhouse, all of which contributed to another issue.
The only place in the story where any of it felt the slightest bit appropriate was the Scorpan Arc, which is another reason I liked that part. There, the deviancy held no hint of fanservice; it was entirely about the very real threat of sexual torture, and as Twilight and Spike put it, power. Not sex, power. It increased his threat level as a villain, especially when Scootaloo was captured. I mean, I couldn't have cared less about Diamond Tiara getting taken (though her misdirecting the god was cool, and comes as a welcome bit of non-bitchiness). But if Scootaloo had been subjected to what Scorpan wanted... that's a violation that I didn't want to happen.
Still, the sex could mostly be removed and I don't think the story would be missing anything.
The final thing I want to talk about is Exposition. Every story needs some, some stories handle it better than others. FiM is not the most graceful, though they've been getting better, turning it into a joke a lot of the time.
You, sir, have not done it well.
As a webcomic, I think it could work. You spend a couple issues, or a chunk of an issue, visually and viscerally exploring a character's past before jumping back to the present... yeah, that'd do fine. But in text form, this is just about the clunkiest story I've ever read, even worse than some of my writing. And I've written some horrible exposition in the past.
There are three parts I want to touch on. Firstly, there's the old adage of “show, don't tell”. You perfectly exemplify this in your story. It's so boring reading walls of text, as you probably are feeling right now. Or maybe not. Maybe I broke this up enough. But apart from the last couple chapters of the Scorpan Arc (again, great bit), I could stop reading a chapter at any point and not care. There was nothing gripping me, nothing holding me to the page. Regardless of the characters, I just couldn't get sucked into it. And it's because I was being told about the world, rather than being shown it.
By far the worst offenses of this type are the two chapters about Spike in his orphanage days, and the chapter about David and Tesseract. All three are nothing but exposited backstory. The information given to the audience isn't totally necessary, and it could be shortened into just a few paragraphs. I liked the segway with Spike and the toy dragon, that part was good, but that does not justify the 10k words of history. 1k, max. Maybe.
Other than it being boring, another reason I don't like the masses of exposition is because they don't matter. They're either not used, or else they fall under the second part.
Which is repetition. So often throughout reading this story, I would have to stop and say to myself, “I already know this!” And I did. It was mentioned earlier, in the narration, and now I'm reading it again because it suddenly became plot relevant and someone seems to think the audience forgot about that part. I have a good memory. Really good, top percentile or whatever, I'm a freak like that. But surely the average reader of a fanfic can remember what was written only a couple chapters ago, or in the worst offenses, a scene change ago. If not, they might say, “Hmm. I missed something. Let's re-read it.” And they should be able to, even want to.
But this story is boring.
The final part is similar to the second one, but far worse. I call it “Snyder Syndrome”. It's what you have when your writing is similar to that of a Zach Snyder Movie. And yours is.
Ouch.
What this means in a more specific sense is that, in your writing, things will often be revealed to the audience but not to the characters, requiring the audience to sit through a character arc that they already know the end of. As an example from Snyder's work: in the movie Batman v Superman, there was a part where Superman had to save Lois Lane after she got captured by an African warlord. But while he did so, a group of mercenaries working for Lex Luthor (we clearly see the relationship between Lex and the mercs' leader) shoot the Africans, remove the bullets, and then use a flamethrower on the bodies to make it look like they were killed by heat vision. If you watched the movie and that doesn't sound familiar, it's because I'm going with the more coherent extended addition. The regular release made no goddamn sense. Anyway, the audience was clearly shown the killings, so we knew what happened, but Lois had to find out by finding a bullet stuck in her journal, then backtracing the bullet to Lex, and then she ended up kidnapped anyway so it was pointless.
Your story does not go quite this far. But you've already given us so much information in the first few chapters, that it inevitably comes up when Twilight hears about the lore from Celestia.
A decent example, and one of the few dull spots in the otherwise gratifying Scorpan Arc, was when he was kidnapping the children. You gave us several scenes of him taking them, including Dinky and Pip. That took away most of the tension from the scenes at the school, as well as the scenes where the main group was speculating about Scorpan's plans. Because the audience knew. Heck, even just him telling his cult that he planned on attacking Celestia's children was a bit much for a hint. Basically, when the reader knows something the characters don't, and it isn't played for horrific irony (imagine Pip and Dinky going to stay with the Crusaders for a weekend, we see them get kidnapped, then as they're going to school three days later the Crusaders grouch about their friends blowing them off and being jerks. That kind of irony), then it's massively frustrating.
I enjoyed it a lot more when Horus was talking about him and his siblings growing up, because there was so much more to the imagination. It was really disturbing in all the right ways. In that vein, I'd recommend not giving exposition as narration at all. That is, whenever we find out something new about a character, have it be because they said it out loud, to a different character. Unless Character 1 is the current narrator, in which case we shouldn't find out anything new about them until the Point of View changes. Savvy?
So that's all my major complaints. Though, before I stop typing, I have one more thing to ask about. I read in the comments that you chose the episodes and plots to keep very carefully, but I don't get your reasoning. Why go for the dress thing when you could've had Dragonshy, and thus increased the fantasy-level of the world while also giving Fluttershy some real depth? Why keep the Zecora bit, which does nothing for the story at the moment, instead of Sonic Rainboom, or Cutie Mark Chronicles, or even Stare Master? Any of those would've made more sense, being all character based and all advancing the lore of the world a bit. This kind of falls under some of what I wrote above, but it's different enough for me to ask separately.
I look forward to the next chapter, which will hopefully be more like the Scorpan Arc, and/or your response.
TL;DR: I like the ideas, the Scorpan Arc was my favorite part. The story doesn't seem to fit the requirements for high fantasy, there's too much unnecessary sex-stuff, and the exposition is so clunky and boring it's almost unreadable. The impression is of reading the 3rd grade chapter book version of a bad Zach Snyder movie. It'd be better if it were written so we found stuff out at the same time as the characters, rather than before them.
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Hello! I am the coauthor of this story in case you didn't know. Thank you soooo much for your comment! When Morgan told me we had gotten a really long and detailed negative comment, I was completely ecstatic. I think I screamed...
Anyway, I'm sure Morgan will reply to your comment as well, I just wanted to beat him to the punch. In regards to your comment, I understand a lot of where you are coming from. MLP was just a placeholder until we thought up a better name. We have debated over the excessive amount of sex in the past, and have decided to tone it down a bit. But, some of the things we can't, because it is quite essential to the story, mostly surrounding Rainbow Dash.
You also had a problem with the lack of diversity, so to speak. This may not have been clear to you, but we have a total of 7 books planned for the series. We can't really explore the world very much yet because if would give away too much too quickly. But I assure you, we have an entire world that will be explained in due time. We also have more than one intelligent species, most of them haven't been introduced yet...
It is also important to know that we purposefully structured the way this story is written like a webcomic. And that's because eventually, it will be one. This could be considered a rough draft I guess.
We have actually hand picked every single episode we thought was crucial to the story. If it wasn't, we got rid of it. Things like Sonic Rainboom and Stare Master are physically impossible to happen in our story. But Cutie Mark Chronicles will be a major plot point later on in the story.
When we started writing this, we didn't want it to feel like a fanfic. We wanted it to be something someone who had never seen FIM could understand. That's why we included the chapters about Spike and the CMC, because they are character introductions. Those chapters honestly couldn't be cut down in length.
I can't think of much else to say right now, but I'm sure Morgan will have more. I hope this cleared a few things up for you, and that you keep reading. Things will pick up quite soon. Thank you for your comment!
(PS, I love Deltora Quest, one of my favorite series ever!)
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Welp, I've changed the title.
What, may I ask, is the meaning behind the new title? It must have some meaning, because otherwise it's unnecessarily confusing to pronounce. "Hoon-doon", I think. Is it some type of Gaelic?
8624335 Yes, that is indeed how you pronounce it.
It's Chinese, actually.
It's an Antagonist Title, a la Lord of the Rings or Soul Eater.
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So, does that mean Discord has multiple names, or is there a bigger bad out there than the guy literally said to be the embodiment of evil?
8624379 "Hùndùn" is Discord's actual name; it's just translated into English as "Discord" for the sake of convenience, much like how Tolkien translated "Orc" as "Goblin" in The Hobbit.
*pokes fanfic with stick* is u alive
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Yes, sorry; I lost my income, and so I'm trying to scrape enough together to get back to it.
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I’m really sorry to hear that, I hope things turn around for you soon :/
[emphasis added]
Sounds like Spike and Sunset may be demigods as well ... or their dad's name is just a red herring ....
Spike and Sunset, maybe? Are they the "mistake" Celestia mentioned back during the Gala? (And what a horrid way for Celestia to view her children if they are, prophecy of doom or no prophecy!)
Wow, the Goddess of Perversion and Lust is going to suck for Twilight when she gets unsealed, between this thing with her liking Spike and her liking Cadance.