BONUS - Helping...Wings? [Non-Canon]
Author's Note
This is my entry into the Lunaverse's Alicorn writing contest. Unfortunately, due to it being a "what if" story that launches directly off from the middle of chapter 2 of "Helping...Hands?", the story failed to pass moderation to be published on its own. This is fair - it can't really stand on its own and so it shouldn't.So, instead, I'll be posting it here, as a bonus chapter of this story. It's, obviously, not canon.
Enjoy! Hopefully.
Chapter 2 is partially reprinted below, up until Lyra transforms.
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Lyra fidgeted as Trixie used her telekinesis to apply the black paint to Lyra’s front and hind hooves. “It’s cold,” she noted, before a thought occurred to her. “And this washes off, right?”
“Yes, yes,” Trixie said, waving a hoof as she worked the paint across Lyra’s face now. “I tested it on myself, though the ritual says that the paint will disappear anyway. Um…hold still, I have to get your horn, too…”
Lyra kept her mouth tightly closed as Trixie applied the paint across her horn, coating it completely. She had to fight hard against the instinct to immediately use magic to clean it off as Trixie finished, stepping away from Lyra. The unicorn was now painted, hoof to head, shoulder to dock, in black paint, made from several natural ingredients that Trixie had prepared the previous day. Thanks to Trixie’s telekinesis, it had taken only a few minutes to apply it all. Only Lyra’s mane and tail were uncovered by the paint at this point.
“It’s not a terrible look,” Trixie said with a wry grin, grabbing a mirror from her kitchen’s counter and showing Lyra herself. “Very…bold, anyway.”
Lyra stared at Trixie. Hard. The clock on the wall read 11:57
“Okay, okay, time limit, I know,” Trixie said, levitating the spellbook over to her and looking it over. The spell they were casting was three pages long, most of it ingredients and how to prepare them, with the last being dedicated to the spell’s magic words. “Okay, most of this spell-thing is just in preparing everything. Paint, check, magic circle…” Trixie looked up from the book, glancing down at Lyra’s hooves. The mint-green unicorn was standing in a circle made from powdered coal, about five feet in diameter. Trixie examined it carefully, as did Lyra. “…no breaks, check. Candles…I think the candles are supposed to be a little closer to the circle.”
Lyra eyed the tall candles, five of them arranged evenly around the circle, warily. “They’re close enough as-is to the coal, thanks,” she said. “if they’re too far and the spell fails, then the spell fails.”
Trixie sighed. “Fine,” she conceded, looking the book over again. “Dust…” Trixie hefted a bag of dust with her telekinesis, levitating it over Lyra’s head. The musician let out an annoyed sigh as Trixie emptied it over her. “Sprinkle of pure water…” Trixie hefted a bowl, and used her telekinesis, again, to splash water across Lyra body, circling her as she did. “And last, the magic words…”
“That’s a really weird concept, by the way,” Lyra said. “I mean, I know that sounds weird coming from me…but words can’t hold magic on their own. They’re mnemonics. When I do my spells through song I’m really just using them to help me focus, the words themselves don’t usually matter…”
“Well, they matter to zebras,” Trixie said as she finished circling Lyra, looking her in the eye. “Okay, here goes…” Trixie closed her eyes, focusing, as Lyra readied herself as well. Both their horns glowed slightly. According to the spellbook, this was the most important part: it wasn’t enough to simply say the words, you had to believe in them.
“Nini ana miguu nne asubuhi,
“Miguu miwili katika mchana,
“Na tatu miguu jioni,
“Wewe!”
Trixie’s eyes were closed, so she didn’t probably didn’t notice the lights in the house dimming – but Lyra did. Her eyes widened as she channeled more magic into her horn. There was definitely something arcane happeing here. As she focused, to her eyes, she could see the magic taking shape around her. Strangely, despite Trixie’s chanting in zebra, the magic didn’t seem to be coming from her at all – but rather, from the paint on her body, which was glowing blue now, and the circle of coal dust, glowing green, and the candles, each of which took on a red aura. The auras seemed to reach out and coild around each other and around Lyra. Lyra was more than enough of an adult to admit that she was wrong: apparently magic words did have power, and she had to admit that the zebra magic seemed to have power to spare. It was as though the spell, rather than taking or even touching Trixie’s own magic, was being pulled from the very air itself and shaped by the words Trixie was speaking.
“Wewe ni binadamu,
“Kutembea kwa miguu miwili!
“Wewe ni binadamu,
“Kushikilia kwa mikono miwili!”
She remembered after a moment that she was supposed to be observing and learning. Focusing, she tried to identify what the magic was actually doing. Definitely transmutation, Lyra observed. Despite the alien source, zebra magic was certainly working along familiar lines as it moved across her body. But…with elements of conjuration? Is this spell from two schools? Is that – is that possible?
Lyra had never heard of a spell somehow being part of two schools at the same time. As Lyra understood magic, it was fairly rigid: Everything could be grouped into the eight schools of magic. Then again, she knew that the schools of magic were, ultimately, created for conveniences sake, and had little to do with magic itself, instead having been named and organized by unicorn wizards long ago. It wasn’t impossible for there to be magic that Lyra didn’t recognize as being part of one of the eight schools, but it was certainly a jarring experience.
“Wewe ni binadamu,
“Ngozi yako ni wazi!
“Wewe ni binadamu,
“Msimamo wako ni mrefu!”
Lyra wasn’t certain she could observe much more – magic positively flooded the air around her now, hurting her eyes and her horn to look at. She’d learned just about all she could, anyway, and so settled back, ‘turning off’ her horn, as it were, and waiting. The spell would take effect in just a few moments, and she’d get to see what it was like as a zebra. She didn’t imagine it would be too different…
“Wewe ni binadamu!
“Wewe ni binadamu!
“Wewe ni binadamu!”
Lyra convulsed at the last word. She had the very distinct sense that whatever was happening should have been immensely painful, but thankfully, it wasn’t – but that didn’t change the fact that all the magic in the room suddenly seemed to collapse into her, as though she had become a sinkhole for it – and began to shake her body around like it was a rag doll. That was when the first sickeningly wet crack split through the air. Lyra had just enough time to wonder if her neck had been snapped, when suddenly everything went black.
---
Hearing was the first thing to return, as Lyra slowly opened her eyes, and found herself looking at Trixie. Her fellow unicorn was frowning, glancing over her book, then back to Lyra, her horn glowing.
“That’s not right…” Trixie mumbled.
Lyra blinked, as she slowly climbed onto her hooves. “What?” she asked, looking down. Her hooves were the same, her coat the same mint-green it was supposed to be –
“Oh, right,” she said, touching a hoof to her snout, then feeling at her horn. She wasn’t supposed to be green, she was supposed to be a black-and-white striped zebra. “All that magic, and I’m still a unicorn?”
Trixie glanced back to Lyra. “Not exactly,” she said, pointing behind Lyra.
Lyra blinked a few times, suddenly freezing in place. What was she going to find when she looked back there? Was she going to find her hindquarters transformed? A fish tail? Tentacles? Was her cutie mark going to be missing? Would that means she had no special talent? Slowly, achingly, Lyra looked behind her…
…and saw, in addition to her perfectly normal hindquarters and cutie mark, a brand new set of mint-green, feathery wings.
Lyra frowned – and her wings moved of their own accord, drooping a little. This startled her – and her wings responded emotively like that of any pegasus, flaring up. The sudden movement startled her more, and her wings started beating of her own accord, taking her up, her wings apparently unaware of the fact that she was in a kitchen with a rather low ceiling.
Smack. Thud.
“Ow,” Lyra said, as she picked herself up off of the ground.
Trixie observed her for a few moments, then looked back to her book. “See, this is why I hate casting from a book,” she said. “I don’t know, I said the magic words right, I’m pretty sure…all the ingredients are right…” She looked to Lyra. “By the way? Those things didn’t magically appear from nowhere, they grew out of you, and they didn’t have feathers at first. It was gross.”
Lyra didn’t pay Trixie any mind as she extended and retracted her wings a few times, stretching them, examining the feathers and the way they moved and bended. It wasn’t everyday that somepony got a new set of appendages, after all. The sensation was…strange, especially given how easily it came to her…moving her wings was as simple as moving her legs or neck. “This is actually pretty cool,” she said, and she set her horn aglow as she cast one of the simplest cantrips, a spell that let a unicorn see magic. “Hang on, I wonder what their magic looks li – aaargh!”
Lyra recoiled, wings beating, as her eyes were suddenly assaulted by bright, golden light, emanating not just from her wings, but her. She beat her wings in panic a few times, taking to the air, slamming into a wall, before finally thinking to dismiss her magic sight cantrip.
Trixie was at Lyra’s side in an instant, leaning over her fallen friend. “What’s wrong? Are you okay?” she asked, putting a hoof on Lyra’s withers.
“Yeah, I’m fine, just…ow! Don’t look at my aura right now, it’s…it’s bright. Ow.”
Trixie frowned. “Hang on,” she said, stepping back from Lyra and setting her horn to glow. “I’m used to seeing really powerful auras, Princess Luna taught me how to basically put some magic sunglasses on…”
Trixie’s eyes flashed blue, as she looked at Lyra for a moment. Her frown deepened. “That’s…odd.”
“What?”
“Well, first, those wings aren’t magical. They’re actually a part of you now. I…think they’re permanent. Well, Princess Luna might be able to get rid of them…or we could grab a saw and some laudanum. Otherwise they’re not coming off.”
Lyra considered, looking to her wings, stretching and unstretching them a few times. She’d had them for five minutes and already they’d made her smack into a wall twice, but that was because she wasn’t used to them yet. All things considered, there were worse things to be trapped as than a winged unicorn – she could have been turned into some kind of naked bear or something. “Well, if they start to be a problem, we’ll go to Luna,” she said, standing up and stretching her wings. “But…I kinda’ like them.” She looked to Trixie. “Was there something else?”
“Yeah. Um…have you always been this bright?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, like I said, the wings are actually a part of you…which means that they shouldn’t be giving off any real magical aura in and of themselves. So what I’m looking at is you right now…your basic magical potential. It's huge.”
Lyra considered the vast, golden light that had nearly blinded her when she’d looked at herself. “That’s…no, that’s not normal,” she said. “I think my teachers at the Academy said that I had a little more magic than was typical, but not much…”
Trixie frowned, and opened her mouth to say something, when there was a midnight-blue flash in the room. Both mares yelped in terror – Lyra’s wings again beating of their own accord – when suddenly the two found themselves no longer in Trixie’s home. Instead, they were floating in the vast reaches of the cosmos…there were stars everywhere, of every brightness and hue. Above them floated the crystalline surface of the moon, bright and full, but otherwise, there was nothing but them and the endless expanse of space.
“I’m going to admit, Trixie,” a familiar voice said, emanating from the moon, “that this has come far sooner than I thought it would…but that does not make it any less of a momentous occasion.”
“Princess Luna?” Trixie and Lyra both asked at the same time.
The two unicorns got the distinct sense that the moon frowned. “Miss Heartstrings?” Luna asked.
Lyra looked to the moon – she supposed that this was where the voice was coming from, and so was probably the right thing to look at. She bowed as best she could, floating in zero gravity as she was. “Um…yes?” she asked.
“Princess, what’s going on?” Trixie asked.
The sense that the moon was frowning deepened. It flashed, and Luna herself was suddenly before them, standing tall and regal despite the lack of gravity, as she looked first at Trixie, then Lyra. She seemed confused.
“Miss Heartstrings…why are you an alicorn?”
Lyra blinked at the question. “I’m…uh…not?”
“Your wings would seem to suggest otherwise.”
Trixie raised a hoof. “That’d be me,” she said. “That zebra spellbook you sent to me…I think a spell or two in it is mislabeled. It gave Lyra wings. I think they’re permanent, but Lyra seems to like them…”
Luna considered Trixie for a moment, then looked back to Lyra, her frown and look of confusion ever growing. “No,” she said at length. “Though I can see the confusion, Trixie, but no, that’s not what happened…”
Luna sat down, heedless of zero gravity. Trixie and Lyra decided to do likewise as Luna looked between the two of them. “Alright, Trixie,” Luna said, “I’m afraid I have a confession to make…I did not merely take you on as my apprentice all those years ago simply because I saw potential in your special talent to do good for Equestria – although that was a large part of my motivation, and I want to make it clear that nothing has changed between us. But, in addition to my hope that you might become a force for good in Equestria, I also saw a…a spark, inside of you.”
“A spark?” Trixie asked.
“More like a seed, actually,” Luna said, “a seed that, if properly nurtured and tended to, would one day blossom. Within you, I saw a nascent godling – the possibility that you could become an alicorn, like myself.”
Trixie blinked. “What?” she asked, then looked to Lyra. Her eyes widened. “What? Oh...oh no, I think I see where this is going…”
Luna grimaced, looking to Lyra. “I don’t know how…” she said, “but I think that…somehow, the zebra magic ritual moved that seed from Trixie, into you, Miss Heartstrings. And then it somehow sprouted, and…well, now you are an alicorn.”
“Give it back!” Trixie exclaimed, standing in the zero gravity. “I wanna be an alicorn!”
Lyra blinked, looking to Trixie, then to herself. “Um, okay…” she said, standing. “I…don’t really want to be an alicorn, your Majesty. Besides, this was Trixie’s destiny…”
Luna tapped her front hooves together. “See, the thing is,” she said, looking embarrassed, “I wasn’t even aware that the seed could be moved…and, now that it has, and now that you are an alicorn, Miss Heartstrings…I doubt very much that it could be moved again.”
Trixie glared at Lyra, while Lyra looked to Trixie, and shrugged helplessly. “I didn’t know!” she exclaimed to Trixie. “I’m sorry…”
Trixie held her glare for a moment more, before wilting. “I…okay,” she moaned. “Fine…you didn’t know…Princess, I guess you didn’t know…it’s just…just…I didn’t even know about this plan of yours – ”
“I felt a long-term effort at molding you into a better pony was a wiser course of action than simply letting you know from the beginning,” Luna said, almost apologetically.
Trixie threw her head back as she wailed. “I wanted to be a god!”
Trixie stomped in place and turned in circles, muttering and ranting to herself, as Luna stood and trotted over to Lyra, heedless of the lack of a ground to trot on. “Give her time,” the Princess said. “I am certain that she will come to accept this.”
“Her?” Lyra asked. “What about me? I don’t want to be an alicorn! I don’t want to have to move the moon and the stars around!”
“Well, they’re mine, so you won’t have to,” Luna said. There was a slight pause as she reached out a hoof, poking Lyra as her face took on an almost petulant, childish look. “Seriously, though. Mine. I’ll let you move the sun on occasion, though, if you want, but the moon and stars are mine.”
Lyra blinked. In an instant, Luna’s serene, regal look was back. “I tend to the heavens in any event,” Luna said. “I’m not certain what your responsibility will be, though I suspect strongly that it will relate to your special talent.”
“But I don’t want responsibility! That’s why I’m a musician!”
Luna frowned. “That’s not stereotypical at all…” she muttered. “Miss Heartstrings, I understand that this is a very big, unexpected change. I don’t expect you to give up everything immediately…in fact, I think that these things will simply happen naturally. That’s what happened with Princess Cadenza in Cavallia.” She bowed her head. “Simply live your life as you might otherwise. Nothing has changed yet.”
“Except that I can banish people to the stars if they annoy me…”
“Mmn, don’t do that, it’s taken me forty millennia to get the night sky just so.” Luna inclined her head. “If you need to talk with me about anything, simply look to the sky and speak. I’ll hear, and I’ll be around to run damage control if you do anything that you shouldn’t like release the Smooze or Tirek or Lavan or Grogar or Arabus.”
“What about Catrina?”
“What about Catrina?”
---
Luna returned Trixie and Lyra to the earth, specifically, just outside of Trixie’s home. Trixie eyed Lyra for some time after she did. “Your horn is still short,” she insisted.
Lyra looked up at her horn. It wasn’t short, she refused to believe it was short…but Trixie was in a mood right now, and Lyra supposed she could understand it. It couldn’t have been easy to deal with, learning in less than a minute that you were going to be a god, but then accidentally transferred that potential to one of your best friends. “Yeah, there’s that,” Lyra conceded. “I’m sorry, Trixie.”
Trixie sighed. “It’s alright,” she admitted after several long moments. “I’m…happy for you, I guess. And also insanely jealous. Insanely, insanely...insanely jealous. But…I guess I can’t miss what I never knew I had. Maybe.”
Lyra nodded. After a moment, she leaned in, giving Trixie a friendly nuzzle. “Still friends?” she asked.
“Yeah…” Trixie confirmed, returning the nuzzle. “Still friends.”
---
Several months later…
Lyra dodged yet another blast of the Alicorn Reclamation Crystal that Trixie had constructed and enchanted over the past several months. “This is not how friends treat other friends, Trixie!” she cried out.
“It is when friends steal stuff from their friends!” Trixie cried out, as she chased after Lyra on her magic carpet. “I want to be an alicorn…!”
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Now was that so hard?
And restating due to contractual obligation:
Man, the sex Lyra and Bon Bkn had that night must have been interesting and weird.
Weird in a good way, mind you.
2266823
"Trixie?"
"Yes?"
"How many friends did you say Mr Bourbon had?"
"Not enough."
....um I mean "Poor Trixie"
Oh lord, that was great!
the Lunaverse
I
If this is a "take that" at any Lunaverse fans who wanted to see how the S3 finale might play out in your world, well done!
Dammit! I've already liked this story already. Oh well, have a
instead.
Clever, this. Still... I dunno. Felt a bit too uncomfortable for me. *Shrug*
I laughed at "rating ponies for nudity," but was then unsure.
you had me laughing hard there.
Lolwut?
I don't get the Catrina part.
2268117
She, like Arabus, Grogar, the Smooze, and Tirek, is a G1 villain. But of the G1 villains, she's the least threatening. Although one of the more fun. She was basically a big primadona.
2268166
Okay. Don't watch the G1 cartoon. Well, I did check out the pilot so see what Megan was like.
hhhmmm, based on her behaviour, Trixie may have ended up waiting for those wings for very long time.
V. fun!
Aww, poor Trixie. So close, and yet so far!
I hope Lyra gets on alright with her new status. She'd make an awesome Alicorn of Music.
Catrina was a pretty cool villain, I thought. But then she stopped being a villain when she got off the drugs and stopped beating her boyfriend. Yay, kid's cartoons!
aww poor Trixie! Besides that fun chapter, Luna's whole "the night is mine / what about Catrina" was highly amusing. heh maybe Trixie will get the alicorn amulet and have her dreams come true. After some crystal sleep of course
Loved the ending!
2266823 I agree. It didn't have to be long but not having Bon Bon's reaction at all is just sad, especially because what does exist is so great.
The funniest thing for me is that really just like the main story it's Trixie's fault she's in this position even though Trixie did the spell correctly as she could. In other words Trixie is really blaming her for making Trixie give away her godddesshood by accident.
2266823
Probably something like this. (Let's see if posting an image works.)
th08.deviantart.net/fs71/PRE/i/2013/059/c/3/i_m_not_even_going_to_ask____by_artpwny-d5wgw8u.png
Absolutely hilarious! I loved this what if...not much more to say, lol
2268166 Like a super-powered Rarity?! the horror!
One adventure and two slice-of-life episodes in. More than ever a fan.
I don't know if you have seen this yet, but the comic book series just came up with its own explanation for Luna's transformation into Nightmare Moon. That's right, the whole thing is now semi-canonically blamable on The Nightmare...
... Forces, plural. So, it is not exactly the puppeteer parasite I feared.
I just read through Family Matters and this story and enjoyed them both immensely. I found them both to be filled with many great little moments, both humor, sadness, and of character interactions.
I kinda like the Lunaverse is a more mature version of FIM, given it leads to plenty of humorous and interesting bits, and lets this story explore its world better. Keep up the great work. I will certainly be reading more Lunaverse in the future.
2749897 You didn't give any indication that she wouldn't. *shrugs*
I think I like this ending better.
3749434 I'm not worried about why they never used monkey, just relieved they didn't. I've seen several stories so far that have used other animals rather than monkey and I like that sort of thinking.
I wwonder what BonBon would say and how mad Corona would be?
The antithetical side of me is wondering how much of this is non-canon though. Yes, Lyra never stole Trixie's 'seed' (That statement is fine. It's your mind that's the problem
), but does Lunaverse Trixie really have the potential to become an Alicorn. Guess I'll find out eventually. Or not. Whatever. 
4947852
"Uh, Rarity? We don't normally wear clothes."
Oh man this was hilarios.
You know what happens when you touch Luna's moon.
She gets mad.
And then you get banished to a floating space rock for a millennia or so. SO NO TOUCHIE.
38.media.tumblr.com/070b089e1d7bcaa0d50ee4cf3b16a6bf/tumblr_n34w06917Z1tqujqpo1_500.gif
5166500 ...i-it was a Fallout Equestria joke...
Nevermind....
(This is a direct follow-up to a post I made on your first story. I happened to read the first two in quick succession, so I decided to comment on them together. I'll be sure to come back and call you a racist a little more slowly in the future.
)
Having read "Helping Hands?", I can see you're making a good faith effort to avoid the unfortunate implications of Zecora being a villain in this series, but there's a lot of telling, not showing. I found Trixie's response to the letter to be aggressively patronising - "let off a few solar flares and get them on their side"? I would hope that 'sun-worship' doesn't equate to 'lack of common sense' in this world. Unless that was an oblique way of saying Corona would simply use the threat of violence against them, which is both a lot more believable and paints the zebras as victims of a villain with no sense of irony (much like the ponies are in the first 'episode') rather than easily duped minions / eager followers of a despot.
Again, it's possible this gets addressed further down the line, but since all we get are vague platitudes from the zebra's leaders back in pony-Africa and we don't have anybody to contrast Zecora with (we don't have any sun-worshipping ponies, even!), we have no idea what other zebras are like. I've seen vague references to Twilight Sparkle, and I'm trying not to spoil myself for the sake of enjoying your stories, but I hope that ties in like I'd expect it to.
I think you handled the approach to zebra magic way better than most people would. The idea that the translators, while individually competent, would make a collectively stupid decision was so accurate to my experiences it made me laugh, and it neatly avoided the usual stereotype of 'black magic' being strange and dangerous in and of itself.
I know I'm focussing a lot on a very specific issue, but the depiction of race in popular media is generally atrocious and some bronies seem to aggressively misinterpret the messages of the show to push a racist agenda. I don't think there's any point at all in trying to argue with these people (they'd just drag me down to their level), but I believe you're a pretty reasonable person (I've used 'good faith' and 'well intentioned' way too much already) and that addressing unintended but problematic messages in a high-quality, popular series like yours is a much more productive use of my time.
Not as productive as reading your stories, though. I just have a lot of 'my time' and a undergrad in English Literature to waste.
5593618
This story kind of reflects an earlier version of the Lunaverse wherein I wanted realms outside of the core continent, recently named Cissanthema, to be seen as vaguely mysterious to most common ponies, much as how Africa, Asia, and the Americas would have been to Europeaners in the 1200s or so. However later stories have expanded on the world enough that that that is no longer the case.
In any event, a few points.
1) Consider that in LNLD, the L6's reaction to meeting a zebra was "oh, that's neat." As opposed to Bridle Gossip, where the entire town of Ponyville was terrified of Zecora and didn't know what she was. Admittedly wandering into town with a cloak and hood and glowing yellow eyes might put the initial blame for everything on Zecora if that was her usual habit. Regardless, no one was scared of Zecora in the Lunaverse. Ponies are not innately afraid of anything that's different. But...
2) I had a blog post about it, but in short the fact that Celestia went mad instead of Luna had a profoundly different effect on pony psychology than the whole Nightmare Moon fiasco back in the TV show. Celestia was the Sun, the elder sister, the beloved one with everything going for her. Her going insane basically scarred the entire Equestrian society for the next thousand years since it seemed like there was no reason or purpose for it (there was, but most ponies didn't know about it) and Celestia seemed to just turn into Corona apropos nothing. The Sun today is seen mostly as a necessity for life, but nopony ever forgets that there is (or was) an insane, evil mare locked inside of it that wants to turn them all into her slaves. So the idea of an entire race of sun-worshippers is positively alien to Lunaverse-Equestrian society, and frankly insane sounding. Tell the average pony on the street that zebras revere the sun and he'll think that they have to be crazy: It's like being told about an entire nation of Satanists...and bear in mind that Satan has just escaped from Hell a few weeks ago and is hiding you don't know where. Sun-worship prior to Corona breaking out would have been seen as like a hardcore vampire or gothic movement or something. Post-Corona breaking out, it seems patently insane.
Note I said "seems". How ponies react to a given thing is not necessarily indicative of how that thing actually is.
Now having said both these things, though, I do not have an agenda. I'm just writing stories. But I also don't feel any obligation to change the things I want to do in a story simply because some people might be offended by it. If they're offended, so be it. They can stop reading.
Twilight, incidentally, has nothing to do with Corona and wants nothing to do with Corona. Corona nearly immolated her big brother; why would she?
I was thinking that Trixie was going to tell Luna to send the guard to clean all the toilets of the palace. Earth Pony style as punishment
6457526
I can only speak and read/write two languages: English and Bad English. Any time there's anything other than English (or Bad English) on the screen, it's because I used Google translate.
6457962
That's what I assumed, I just backtranslated it the same way and thought what I got out of it was really funny. The MacBeth reference is, of course, always appreciated. Perennial favourite of mine. In fact, all the spells are really hilarious, though. "Human problems go away, to where it's affordable and much nicer than here," snerk. I really love it when an author puts little easter eggs like that into their story.
8843772
Srsly. It does not help that most engineers coincidentally(!) are bad at communication. Ambiguities, personal preferences, and silence cost even small companies hundreds of thousands of dollars in reworks and redlines and change orders because the division of labour has been so heavily developed in attempts to make everyone's job as assembly-line-like as possible.
memegenerator.net/img/instances/54750963/its-a-mess.jpg
8846379
it does not help that whenever an engineer says that something should be done differently, management either 1) imagines or realizes costs, while unable to understand need or unable to represent that need for upper echelon or 2) believes that "experts" (see gag The Expert on YT or story with same name here) who created current order are infallible and questions engineer's loyalty instead.
Engineers can tune system they are responsible for, but they unable to defeat system they are part of if it is mismanaged or designed improperly. I know that, being one.
i mean last time i heard catrina was helping a bald human his pie family harem
10191306
I remember that series. In any case, if this is what turning into a pony would entail, I would like to be asleep or unconscious when it happens. And Lyra is right paper cuts are a real *****
"She and Rep retired to private life fifteen hundred years ago anyway."