[Original song here: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=4JRfCZpvjwA]
(I'm waking up on Sunset Boulevard
Maxing out all my credit cards
Living my own pony story
Living it up 'til the morning)
The two are seen ordering dozens of ice cream orders... and Shining only takes one ice cream cone...
(Shining!
I'm not trying to show you love and affection
I'm trying to live the life a kid always expected)
The two are walking over and are about to see a movie.
(Over on Sunset, finished a couple sessions
One foot in the door, one in the hills, questions)
They leave laughing maniacally and Shining even rolls on the floor.
(Angels in leather, I ain't talking 'bout the motor club
But I tend to go really hard when I go to clubs)
The two are leaving a motorcycle dealership and ride out heading to a party.
(Let's take some time to see the lights
With some nice mares who hang out every single day & night)
Lyra Heartstrings winks in their direction, Jon blushes...
(Who cares what they all say
Try'na find some girls like what do you say?)
Jon is seen walking to her and she hands him a paper with her number, Shining Armor hoof bumps him.
(Had you for a week but I heard you say fiance
Na na, none of that now)
I fell in love, the streets got a glow
The city of angels is calling me home
And she said, and she said uh
The duo check into a hotel by the beach.
I'm waking up on Sunset Boulevard Maxing out all my credit cards Living my own pony story Living it up 'til the morning We'll be rocking out like super stars Living off of hotel minibars Living our own pony story Living it up, living it up We living it up Jon is ordering lots and lots of sodas and coffees from the mini bar, Shining was paying for everything as he's a prince!
(Everybody's a model or a wannabe
If you're that bad it's Manehatten where you ought'a be)
The two head out to the beach and another party is happening.
(She's an actress, working on the late shift
Only longs for a big break as a waitress)
A pretty mare passes by them and blows the two a kiss.
(Walk the strip, see the fashion getting wacky now
Out the door, passing out)
The two are heading to the stores and are buying a series of comedic costumes, Shining went as pirates, cowboys, vikings,Jon goes as vampires, werewolves, zombies... scaring one of the kids by on accident...
(Hit the floor, see the studio
Credit card at the game never closing out)
The two are watching a race, Jon chuckles as Shining seems to have lost a bet!
(But the weather's so nice, nobody slowing down
Well except for the 101)
Shining accidentally crashes the motorcycle he rented, Jon laughs at this... then he does the same!
(Gotta SUV stuck in traffic with a ton of buds
I can promise you tonight's gon' be a ton of fun
Know that c-c-c-c)
('Cause I fell in love, the streets got a glow
The city of angels is calling me home
And she said, and she said uh)
The two are at a karaoke club singing a duet together.
(I'm waking up on Sunset Boulevard
Maxing out all my credit cards
Living my own pony story
Living it up 'til the morning
We'll be rocking out like super stars
Living off of hotel minibars
Living our own pony story
Living it up, living it up
We living it up)
Shining and Jon get the third prize trophie, behind a boy band and a girl group arguing who was better...
(Upper Edge Cafe like Sugar Cube
She got a big party, every time I see the view
Shining Armor, everyday summer
Never on the sheets like you're on top of the cover)
They return to the hotel and start a video game competition, of which Shining Armor creams Jon at.
(Every day when I'm away look I'm stone cold
Look at the cops, don't even care, you can just blow up
I'm Robin Hood on the beat
I get paid in Canterlot and give it back to the Princess)
Jon gives back the bits money he won at the ball game earlier...
(I fell in love, the streets got a glow
The city of angels is calling me home
And she said, and she said uh)
The duo hit up a pool and both trip on the diving boards...
(I'm waking up on Sunset Boulevard
Maxing out all my credit cards
Living my own pony story
Living it up 'til the morning
We'll be rocking out like super stars
Living off of hotel minibars
Living our own pony story
Living it up, living it up
We living it up!)
A quick montage of them passing from laser tag, bowling, mini golf, and DDR, it getting more and more competitive. At last the duo finally decided to head back home and call it a night and brag to the girls!
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Back at the resturaunt, Twilight seemed worried about Marshall, not only because of what he told her, but because Celestia didn't even tell her about him, why was that? "Hey, does anypony else think Marshall's kind of...?" Twilight began to ask.
"Dreamy...?" Rarity and Cadence said in unison, following Cadence looking embarrassed from that.
"Well actually, more like, creepy? I mean last night he spoke and he went on about how Shining Armor isn't appreciated and how he wanted my speech to be short and took my cards and..."
"Oh that explains it!" Starlight yelled out happily, making them all look over at her confused.
"Huh... Anyway... He just gives me this weird feeling that's all." Twilight completed.
The rest of the group just started laughing, "Twi, are you seriously jealous of Marshall? Come on Twi, just because he's a stallion doesn't mean he's evil." Spike said.
"It's not that he's a stallion, it's that..."
"Is this because he's a hinny? 'Cause I already had to have this conversation with Rarity." Applejack asked.
"Will you guys listen, he gave me that rant and told me 'he plans to make a lot of change' and just walked off in a sinister tone, he didn't say anything else, and I'm still worried about Shining Armor too."
"Twilight, I've met him and can tell you there's nothing wrong with Marshall, sure he's a little snarky and egotistical, but so is Rainbow Dash, nopony's perfect... even if they look perfect." Cadence responded, blushing a bit, but then remembering she's married to Shining Armor.
Twilight just looked annoyed, "That's great advice everypony, I think I heard Queen Chrysalis say that... remember?" And suddenly they all looked awkward and started listening to her more.
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Over at Big Mac's table, Ginger was looked right past Big Mac and trying to wave at Applejack, much to Big Mac's dismay. "It's about time you introduced me to ya sista, I've been waiting to meet her for years!" Ginger said.
"Eeyup..." Mac sighed.
"I mean we needed to mix it up, it was getting boring with us, wouldn't ya say?" She asked.
"Nope?" He responded in confusion.
"Hey, maybe ya could get her to come by my house tomorrow, ya know, some one on one time with her, could ya do that honey?"
Big Mac started to get suspicious... "...Um... Uh... Umm, Nope."
"Wait, whatchya say to me?"
"Nope."
"Wait hold up, are ya tellin' me ya ain't gonna get me close to Applejack?" She asked in a sassy tone.
"Eeyup." He responded.
"That's it, see ya... or not." She got up and was about to fly out...
"Wait what?" He asked before she left.
"Look I just wanted to get to know Applejack, the element of harmony, so I tried spending time with some big hick but clearly it was for notin'" She responded, "Lata!"
"Nope!" He exclaimed, "Ya know what... I've got a lot to tell ya... First, we're done...!"
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Following, Shining Armor and Mocha Jon were walking down the street heading back for the palace. Shining Armor was trying to get Jon to try Twilight and Cadence's Sunshine routine. Shining said he has always wanted to try it but Cadence said it was always for mares only. Jon was reluctant but Shining managed to convince him to try it. Afterwards, they both looked horribly embarrassed...
"Let's never speak of this again..." They said in unison.
"Yeah, I think I'll stick with the classic Patty-Cake." Jon added, and suddenly without warning or given reason, Shining started clucking like a chicken, much to Jon's annoyance, "Okay pause... Really? I thought you were embarrassed too, why are you taunting me? Uh Shining?" Shining wasn't taunting, he kept acting like that and even started pecking at the floor, "Dude why are you acting like you're loco for cocoa?"
Then Shining stopped whatever he was doing and looked back up, "Tell me about it, I can see why she said it was for mares only." Shining said, not remembering the sudden chicken outbreak.
"But... didn't you... You know what, I don't even wanna know, let's go."
They started walking again, but then they see Big Macintosh standing by a bus stop looking depressed.
"Hey, aren't you Applejack's brother?" Shining asked.
"No, he has that cutie mark as a tattoo." Jon sarcastically responded.
"What are you doing over here in Canterlot and why are you so glum?" Shining asked again.
"Wait, I recognize that face, you just left somepony special?" Jon asked.
"Eeyup."
"You really cared about this pony?" Shining asked.
"Eeyup."
"She didn't really like you?" Jon asked.
"Nope."
"Just using you to get to Applejack?" Shining added.
"Eeyup."
"Alright join the club, come on, you need a boys' night out." Shining and Jon said in unison. Suddenly a quick montage of the events Shining and Jon did were flashing with Big Mac put in, enjoying himself now.
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Later, everypony meets back at the castle at the exact time, Cadence was unaware that Shining had went out that night.
"Shining Armor? What were you doing, who was watching Flurry Heart, also, who is this?" She asked
"While you all went out tonight, I went out on a much needed guys' night out, and don't worry, Marshall was watching her." He responded.
"This is Applejack's brother, he had an unusual night, we'll explain tomorrow." Jon added.
Marshall came out and was exasperated by watching Flurry Heart, showing extreme distress... "Please... Never never again!!!" A flashback shows Flurry Heart flying all across the castle, ruining every single book on the shelves, and accidentally setting fire to a filled bathtub... Back to the meeting outside, everypony went inside for bed. "Miss Twilight, may I have a word." Marshall asked, to Twilight's concern.
In Marshall's room, he seemed apologetic, "Listen, I wish to apologize for my horrible behavior last night, it was very out of line and I am truly sorry."
"Oh... Well, I guess..." She began.
"And I am also sorry for requesting to Celestia to not tell you about me, I asked her to keep my progress from you..." He awkwardly admitted.
"But... but why?"
"Because then you would have been my teacher, and my accomplishments would not have been mine as a student, they would have been yours as a Princess and a teacher." He responded, sounding casual.
Twilight was hurt by that comment, "What's that supposed to mean?"
"Simple, you're a mare, every pony expects greatness from you and expect you to pass your own wisdom down on a simple stallion like myself." He answered, pouring himself a drink.
"What does me being a mare have to do with anything?"
"Well, sense I was the first Alicorn Prince, every pony would assume I needed every Princess to achieve my goal, and I needed to prove that a stallion can be great on his own. Now Twilight, I am so glad to have gotten this off my chest, goodnight Princess, thank you for giving me your time I feel wonderful! Now if you excuse me, I must have a word with your brother!" He says as he excitedly flew out... even though it was his room.
"What did he mean by that?" She was now more concerned than ever, but now she also felt slightly guilty.
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Marshall knocked on Shining's door and Shining let him in, he was expecting Jon to show him his manga comics but he was happy to see Marshall.
"Oh hey dude, look I'm sorry Flurry Heart was a handle. we thought she was getting better and..."
"Oh do not worry about that amigo, I actually wanted to ask you a favor..." Marshall asked.
"Oh, um, alright I guess."
"I've been practicing a new spell, would you like to see it...?" He asked, in a mildly sinister tone...
"Oh sure thing, I love seeing new magic!" He nerdy-wise answered.
Marshall's horn began to glow and he recited this exact spell... "Sin lanzar un ataque, el semental presentará..."
At that moment, Shining Armor's excited face began to glow the same color as Marshall's horn and he closed his eyes. When he opened them his face was expressionless and his eyes turned from turquoise to bright cyan...
At that moment Mocha Jon walked into the room showing his comics, but he saw what was happening to Shining, "Shining? Shining!? Shining Armor! Snap out of it!!!" Jon tried waving his hoof to make a snapping sound, "Man, I need something on my hooves that can make a snapping sound..."
Marshall walked closer, much to Jon's shock, "Marshall? What's going on? Also, really? Shining's hypnotized again? Dude your memoir will not have a lot of chapters."
"Sin lanzar un ataque, el semental presentará!" Marshall yelled out and suddenly the same thing that happened to Shining happened to Jon...
I DO NOT OWN THAT SONG, IT WAS ADDED PURELY FOR PARODY PURPOSES ONLY, CREDIT GOES TO SAMMY ADAMS, HIS RECORD LABEL, THE PRODUCERS, AND WHOEVER OWNS THE SONG!!!
This seems like an interesting story. Please update often.
7262783 Thanks! you're the first person to comment on it, I'll have the next part up either tomorrow or the next day!
This is... interesting. Marshall doesn't seem too bad character-wise and so far Jon is not a glaringly obvious self-insert. The latter has a second positive point to it considering you made Jon as weak to Marshall's magic as Shining Armor; he's not glaringly overpowered and thus he's at least somewhat more fallible than other self-insert characters.
There are a few things I would like to comment on regarding structure, though.
First, do not rely on this:
It is fine to establish the background and setting of a story as well as new things occuring that have not before this time. But this style of narration is something you need to do all or none; either you place something like this in every large narration bit such that it becomes part of the story, or you don't do it at all. You do it every once in a while, but it kind of jerks back and forth between being serious, straight-forward narration and this wacky fourth-wall-breaking tone, and so it would help if you had it a little more consistently one or the other.
Second, do not do this:
It's your job as a writer to show these things. What did Shining Armor and Jon do? How did this make Big Mac feel happy? How long did it take to make him feel happy? Why is it specifically these two characters and not anyone else? These are all important details you pretty much completely gloss over with sentences like this. Plus there is the added fact that you are trying to evoke a visual thing in written media, which is nigh completely ineffective without extreme detail, at which point it's not exactly a montage anymore.
Third, do not do this:
This is... spotty at best. Music, especially lyrical music, is very difficult to place in literature. You're one step ahead of some by giving a tune to go off of, but most people will not click that link because it is somewhat distracting, and thus you get the great majority of people that have no idea of what the music is supposed to sound like. Also, your formatting here is all over the place with the parenthesis and the alternating lines that are all sort of squished together; you're trying to fit too many different media styles in here by trying to make it like a written music video, which is almost as problematic trying to convey as the montage up above. With this odd format, consider yourself lucky if people even recognize the difference in the two for a while.
Fourth, do not do this:
To begin with, I have no idea who Cree Summer is. As such, this doesn't help me at all in trying to convey how she sounds. It is better and more effective to say what she sounds like. Is she more husky or clear and bright sounding? Is it higher and musical or is it monotone? Is it quick and hurried or is it more relaxed and laid-back? Is it (American) South, royal British English, Cockney British English, trace of Eastern European accent, Indian, Russian, what? That is way more effective than just saying who she sounds like, and remember there's a lot of different ways to describe how a voice sounds. Use them; description is the writer's best friend (so long as it doesn't become purple prose).
Finally, do not do this:
This is the closest thing to a "montage" you're going to get. But the problem is it's telling us a lot but not showing us anything. Why not put in a section of Twilight's speech, make Rarity interrupt her in the middle of a sentence, and tell her this in dialogue? Not only does this tell us stuff about the scene by putting in actual character reactions and voices, but it also makes it more personal and delves into the lives of these characters. Part of writing is making the reader want to invest their time in these characters and if you merely report what they do there's no real interaction or immersion happening and the reader won't want to go much farther.
My advice to you is this: find some of the highest-rated stories on the site and pick up some of the higher-rated pieces of classic literature - J. R. R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, Dostoyevsky, Capote, etc. - and read them. See how they evoke character and description and action. Do writing exercises, challenge yourself to improve and take these concepts to the next level. You have an interesting premise here; fix your structure and it'll probably be a damn good story.
7263033 Wow you put a lot of thought into that! You make some great points. My responses are these:
1) You're totally right about thatI I want this to be somewhat serious and present a lot of true feelings like everything Marshall complains about, but I also want this to be set as if it was actually an episode of the show, where even in the most drastic situations they have great comedy (Pinkie Pie wanting to see a changeling do her) butI have a problem with that structure and tend to place the jokes where they don't belong.
2) As I will explain in 3, the montage Shining and Jon did was presented more, but reinstating it was intended to be kind of like a Family Guy quick little self referential cutaway that had a huge backfire due to the lack of explanation in it so you got a point there.
3) I don't know what the heck happened to that part, I typed them to where the lyrics were underlined and italics and the scenes were normal, but for some reason when I transferred them to FimFiction, it got super glitchy and malformed and I don't know why, heck the entire chapter 3 got horribly formatted on FanFiction,net too, no clue why it happened.
4) First, you may know her as Susie Carmichael, Foxxy Love, Number 5, Valerie Gray... she has so many roles... And second of all, I don't really know how to describe her voice... it's just so unusual, the best I can do is say it's raspy and has a huge urban accent to it. However I defiantly should have described Marshall's voice, believe me Enrique Iglesias' speaking and singing voices are nothing alike and trust me I did not do his voice justice here, so I'll give you that one.
5) I was just worried about spoiling the speech because it was fresh in my mind and I wasn't sure how to differentiate them, so point goes to you there.
Also, thanks for the points on Marshall and Jon, when Marshall's backstory is revealed he will make much more sense (but he won't have a freudian excuse though, I hate those). And Jon is literally me (with the exception of his love of manga and horror stories) but he isn't powerful at all, he has such a small horn his magic isn't too good! Also, this story is still intended to be comedic and having a perfect character means having no chances for comedy at all, and I love self referential jokes so I love making my guy look bad.
7263080
I can't explain the occasional line that looks like two smashed together, but Fimfiction has a very specific formatting system. As such, you use certain formatting styles in Word they won't translate over when copy-pasting to Fimfiction. For example, to italicize, you have to put [ i][ /i] around the text you want italicized but without the spaces. There's other stuff for bolding and italicizing, but it's weird considering you have it bolded somewhere else but the stuff you said was supposed to be italicized isn't, so I'm not sure if that's a mistake on your part of not formatting it properly or Fimfiction for not entirely recognizing it.
Still no recognition, but this introduces another problem: if these are animated roles, some voice actors can modify their voices per the role they're playing. Best example I can think of is the voice actress for Spike, Cathy Weseluck; you watch a panel where she appears at a convention and she sounds nothing like Spike normally but alters her voice for the role. Thus someone who saw Summers in one role may have an entirely different opinion of her voice than another role simply because the needs of the role can be different. You say it's raspy and has an urban accent? For me, that does a lot more than saying who you imagine it to be voiced by because it's something a little more tangible to me than a name I don't recognize.
I don't actually think you put that in. Do it! It's a small detail that could be of some plot importance later on, so introduce it early. This is another of those little details that increases immersion in a story; it seems like a tiny detail, but it can really change how people view the character.
7263098
About the text formating, I got the bold part done easily when I saw the bold button on the site, but it became too much of a hassle to out the italics on the lyrics so I tried deleting them but then this happened... There are going to be other song parts put in too and hopefully they'll be better
Cree Summer is probably the most recognizable voice in cartoons, trust me, if you know one of her voices you know them all, if it was Tara Strong, then I would see your point.
I didn't mention the horn part because there just wasn't a scene to show him using magic, don't worry I will work it in, it's supposed to surprise the other characters, and he doesn't like to talk about it... he's really embarrassed by it, he drank so much coffee it stunted the horn's growth.
7263114
Did a quick Wiki search...
I know two of the voices: Cleo from Clifford the Big Red Dog and Kida from Atlantis: The Lost Empire. And honestly, there is a slight difference in the roles: the raspy quality is very much reduced when she's voicing Kida compared to Cleo, and so there's a small difference. Not as noticeable as it is with others, but it is still present. Again, sticking with the "raspy and urban-like" evokes more than just listing an actor name.
7263139 Alright you win then.
(by the way, seven dislikes and not a single one commented to say why, talk about mean!)
7263161
It happens rather often, sadly.