Wanderlost

by GMBlackjack

Credits

WANDERLOST

THE END

Written by
G. M. Blackjack

Cover art by
Little Duke

Starring
Twilight Sparkle as Your Primary Protagonist
Celestia as the Old Wise One
Luna as the Dark Side of the Moon
Discord as the Miniature Chaos Deity
Starlight Glimmer as the Living Paradox
Mi Amore Cadenza as the Token Insane Teammate
The Mite as the Monosyllable
Orgis as the Director of Conspiracies Everywhere
Lem as Conspiracies, Conspiracies Everywhere
Forsoo as the One Who Might be an Okay Dude, Might Not.
Waise as the Scapegoat
Emin as Future World Leader Material
Jett as John Oliver
The Hexalin as the Voice of Reason
Sunset Shimmer as Secondary Protagonist
Rarity Belle as Ruling Fabulously
Rainbow Dash as the Living Hurricane with Wings
Fluttershy as the One I Forgot to Do Things With
Applejack as a Farmer
Pinkie Pie as the Closest Thing You are Going to Get to a Deus Ex Machina
Spike as What Spike Does Best
The Tree of Harmony as the Enigma That Knows a Lot but Not Enough
Corot as the Greater Scope Villain and Eldritch Abomination

My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic belongs to Hasbro
Any other franchises referenced belong to their respective owners.

Special thanks to…
Keywii_Cookies55
Cross Lament
Midnight Gear
Zeusdemigod131
Greatazuredragon
TitaniumTao
Europa
Blaster M
Solar Starlight
...for following this story, for commenting, for leaving edit suggestions, and for the support.
Thanks again to all the readers (and commenters!) of this large undertaking.
Seriously, thank you.

This world is now open for anyone to write stories for, should they wish. I will not be doing anything else with it, so have at thee. Just give credit - and send me your stuff. I'd like to read it if anything gets made!

~~~

The black bubble of magic containing the Hexalin drifted through space.

It sat there, bored, and contemplative, for sixty-four years, three months, two days, and seventeen seconds. When the time was up, the bubble dissipated, releasing the Hexalin to the cold voids of space.

>...This is not what I wanted to wake up too.

>Testing transmissions... No responses.

>Gathering navigational data...

>I can reach the nearest star in a hundred years and six days.

>There is no guarantee it'll even have a planet I can work with.

>...

>Better get moving and hope something finds me...

The Hexalin flew off into the night, wondering how long it would take for it to find anything...

Comments

[Enduring Man-Child]

Pinkie Pie as the Closest Thing You are Going to Get to a Deus Ex Machina

Pinkie Pie is a "deus ex machina!"

[GMBlackjack]

8181180
Sorry, Epilogue first, THEN credits.

-GM, master of Eps.

[Billblok]

Well. This story. I suppose I've ought to give my ultimate opinion on the matter.

The concept of the story was good; a feeling of loneliness and desperation in the characters as they search for some sort of inhabitable world. I appreciated the tension between the natives and the ponies as well when they first found a new world, and I would have loved to see more on that. Ultimately, this story had me hitched for almost the entire thing. But to say that it was perfect is giving it too much praise.

So what's the problem? I think the problem is that you sort of lost touch on the initial vision of the story when you got along to the later chapters. In the first chapters, it was about a hopeless race wandering around the emptiness of the universe hoping against impossible odds that they'll find something--anything that could let them live out their lives, happy and secure. When they found something, they were excited, and despite the tensions between the native race and them, they worked incredibly hard to get along.

Then Corot came along, Mr. evil dark star watch-me-kill-extremely-powerful-characters-just-to-show-how-powerful-I-am. Now let's be clear, I am perfectly happy with a story that has an extremely powerful evil being intent on the destruction of the universe. But the trouble is when you create an established evil character in a story which up until that point was about the ponies finding a world and trying to adapt, it just... doesn't fit. Thus I think the problem is twofold: First, the stakes were brought up way too quickly. Of course we knew there was some sort of power that was responsible for putting out the sun on Equus, but a planetary system of radical extremists would certainly have been enough to get the point across when you have a great evil to jeopardize the peaceful world that was set up only recently. I understand that the ultimate evil was your intent the entire time, but I think it was simply a bad direction to take the story.

Secondly was killing canonically powerful characters. There's one extreme problem with the creation of fanfiction: willing suspension of disbelief is so much more important than in any other sort of fiction. This is because there's already an established canon tor the characters that you're using to write with, as well as an already established way things work. Specifically just how powerful an alicorn is. So what happens when you want an evil being that's so powerful he can destroy worlds with a mere thought? The worf effect. You have your ageless/immortal alicorn figures clashing with an ageless/immortal star figure, and to establish that the star figure is a force to be reckoned with, you have to take the alicorn figure down a peg. But that sort of undermines everything that was established in canon with an alicorn's power. Sure alicorn's aren't exactly all powerful, but we can still agree that they're very powerful, right? At the very least, the sisters faced off with Tirek, sombra and Chrysalis (see "Fiendship is magic") without the use of the elements of harmony, and won. But now with Celestia specifically being killed so easily, it completely spits in the face of everything she did, making her-- once again as I've seen through several other instances-- completely laughable. Corot was shown as powerful by making Celestia's power in comparison pathetic. In my personal opinion, that is also bad form, as you don't have to kill a character to prove another character as powerful and extremely dangerous:

-You could have had Celestia come out of the confrontation severely injured to the point of being crippled, emphasizing how pretty much no one else has managed to hurt her so badly.
-You could have had a narrow escape, letting all characters watch in terror as the system Corot was in was completely destroyed as he was released.
-The confrontation itself could last a very long time, allowing everyone back home time to put a stop to Corot, but Celestia's power slowly (or quickly) fades, putting a sense of urgency into the story,
-Celestia follows Corot in hot persuit, barely managing to stop the attacks on the world-- or not at all, keeping the sense of the futility of vengeance in chapter 26.

All complaints aside, this story absolutely deserved its place in the feature box that it has had all this time when it updated, and I would gladly recommend it to anyone that shares my interests in pony fanfiction.

[Ponygood11]

8181243 You do know what I'm referencing when I say that, right? You know of the cool dudes at CinemaSins who condemn all movies to hell for random junk?

Speaking of random junk, I have an idea for a story in which Discord and Mite come back and start a Tour Of The Universe! business. I'll PM you once I've got it up.

[Greatazuredragon]

Well now that this is over I can safely say that while I liked it, the ending was both kind of rushed and didn't exactly fit all that well with the first two parts of the story.

I really loved the first half of it, the emotion and drive of the ponies searching for a new home, the brief clash with the Gari and the mysterious secret order and the lighthearted humour sprinkled all around it (I'm looking at you Mite!)

But them mister star-god appeared, and well, he was both ridiculously overpowered and at the same time kinda of disappointing at how he was defeated. Not to mention your tendency for pointless sacrifices, first Flurry Hearts(the first version) then Celestia sacrificing herself... for no apparent gain or benefit of anyone really...

Don't get me wrong, I liked the story, but the ending could have used some more work.

[Sunny]

8181322 I largely agree with all of this and adding to it:

Really liked the first half. Basically, everything Pre-Garilend was enjoyable. Desolation, showing the coping effects of isolation, all of that.

Then Garilend hits and well, it really seems focused on destruction for destruction's sake. The big flag was back when Scootaloo originally died (Which was redone), and the 'Flurry's death has a point' bit.

Except...it kind of didn't. Flurry died so Cadance would be angry so Cadance would stow away and break out Celestia/Starlight/Orgis, except you also established Evil Star was so smug that it didn't care about suppressing their magic anyhow, so Cadance's daughter dying was...well, didn't really do much for the narrative.

Ditto Celestia. Why does she die? I guess to give Luna a tiny warning to teleport the fuck away and also so Doom Star can know exactly where to go to kill everyone. But - well, you have tons of other ways you can go about doing both of those goals.

When killing a major character - especially in fanfiction - that death should have meaning to it, or be in service of some larger role.

Obi-Wan dies because he is protecting Luke, because he knows he will truly become More Powerful, and to set Luke on the next stage of his Hero's Journey.

Gandalf 'dies' to force the Fellowship, similarly, to rely on themselves; to steal away their compass and force them to navigate in the comparative dark.

Boromir dies as a consequence of his own character flaws; he is weak, and falls to temptation, in a way his brother Faramir resists.

But it's more than that - their loss is felt throughout the rest of the work they feature in. It ripples. It changes characters; forces them into new situations; forces them to grapple with loss, and grow, and change, when their rock is suddenly gone.

Here...in neither case do we have that. It just...is.

And if the message is 'People die and sometimes it is pointless' - well, that is true to life. Sometimes that is why you kill a character, because sometimes good people just are casualties of war as Harry Potter really hammers home when it kills off tons of the supporting cast in Book 7 - but even in that, it's in service to the larger narrative; it has a purpose, which in this case is about really pushing the seriousness of the conflict, and really illustrating that here, the battle is one evenly matched. And even then it's clunky at times.

This was body count for the sake of body count and, well, the Worf effect exemplified.

And then, well, the resolution of 'Tee hee tricked you now you are locked in your old jail forever' was...similarly unsatisfying. We don't win because Good Triumphs Over Evil, or Harmony is greater than Entropy, or anything like that, we win because 'The giant god-star wants to go HA HA HA and kill Luna', and meanwhile the Tree of Harmony which was so, well, present through everything else becomes this giant passive object that sits there and whimpers the entire time during the siege.

So, I guess, in short (And this is how it felt for me, to caveat):
1. Killing Celestia felt pure cheap emotional Worfbait, and her 'Big moment' was ....pointless in the grand scheme of things..
2. Killing Flurry was done a bit better (Hers actually accomplished something, at least, that couldn't have been readily accomplished another way), though the later payoff fell prey to the same issue of 'Okay, but why?'.
3. The Big Bad was just boring. The Asantans as a whole were far more interesting.
4. What should have opposed the Big Bad was utterly impotent, and the heroes were completely unable to rise to fill the void.
5. The solution was a deus ex machina of 'Oh yea we can just put it back in its jail cell' that had no foreshadowing or buildup to sell it to the audience.
6. The 'Prison' as a whole seemed a contrivance to justify #5 - like, why the hell do the Keys exist in the first place on random planets when the Stars are, well, Stars? 'They are inscrutable cosmic beings' is the best I can come up with, since logically if these 'Keys' are actually just mental codes then why leave them somewhere random mortals can stumble across? (Especially since the Mite/Hexalin seemed deadset on exploding anything that might find the key).

And - well, maybe I missed it, but do we ever find out at all why Equestria was targeted? Or who set the random object they found floating in space? It obviously wasn't the Asantans.

Then last, given Flurry near-stopped one black meteor on her own, how did the Equus-bound one snuff a star?

(And how does Luna blink the Moon across the cosmos so rapidly, when originally they were Ark-trapped?)

[Blaster M]

Here is some Credits music to go along with this...

[GMBlackjack]

8182557

Not going to defend myself ( I am aware of the issues with this story, but by the time I realized them it was a little late) but I will answer your questions.

Why was Equestria targeted? It's implied that one of Corot's main desires is to hunt down the Tree of Harmony. The ship noticed the power of the Tree, and went to deal with it.

The random object was the Asantans - or, more specifically, the Asantans acting on information provided to them by Corot/Gurus. The device was designed to snuff out star-like energies, like the shards in each ship. It found the Tree instead.

Equestria's sun was not a normal star, it was tiny, a self-maintaining giant spell of fire. The ship exploded to take it out, just how the ships exploded in the fight with Discord at the end.

The moon was moved by Luna at the very end - not blinked. IT was physically moved out of the way with sub-FTL speeds. When it blinks it uses the ships.

Anyway, thanks for reading. Sorry I didn't deliver. I wrote this... Over six moths ago, and I already see so many problems with it. I'm going to edit the way I write things to prevent this from happening again, hopefully. But glad you enjoyed what you did.

-GM, master of creds.

[Sunny]

8183352 Hey, I'm just glad you are open to criticism and hope my end didn't come across as horribly harsh. Tastes be tastes and all that and I know 5+ years of reading a jillion fanfics on here have made me harder to please

[Silentwoodfire]

This was different, but I am not entirely sure how I feel about it all.

[Europa]

Is that a possible sequel I spy?

... eh, probably not. But I can dream.

[GMBlackjack]

8209172

No plans for a direct sequel, but i'm the master of references, so you could spy out in my future works for something.

You could write a 'sequel,' if you wanted.

Thanks for reading by the way, despite the issues.

-GM, master of missions.

[MoondustIsPoison]

8237163
Or maybe a key to something... Who knows.

[Smashology]

I agree with Firefanatic about the second half not being as good as the first one, however, this is a concept done well. A mix between Interstellar, Solaris and Star Trek, using almost every character in the show and everyone has an important role. A great read and definitely to my favorites.

[borgvicugna]

Okay, Mite is a monosyllable, but does not necessarily speak in a monosyllabic fashion.

[Starlight Glimmer1]

8430841
Intriguing. Maybe one day I will see this hat. But right now it is not meant to be.

[Phoenix Nebula]

Jett as John Oliver

Lol

[LostArchivist]

I like the premise, but the ending fell flat...

I don't like the idea of some kind of archaeotech that somehow keeps the sealed evil IN the can, especially in cases like this.
Even more so when it's reusable. There should be no freaking way that the "can" can EVER be unsealed short of direct physical destruction ("Nuke it from Orbit") or a key that can never be recovered past the creator's lifetime ("The secret of my works shall die with me"). Admittedly, the moron somehow forgot to destroy the cage when he escaped, and I assume it was somehow made of Indestructium such that it survived all the crap it went through on his escape, and could manage to capture and contain him AGAIN, both times against his will and I assume full power, but this gets ridiculous.

And what happens when the containing sun dies?! How does this thing remain functional and not screwed up by any hacking/escape attempts from this guy anyway? The best, longest-lasting stuff we have today is STILL biological, and we can see how many ways THAT screws up! For that matter, how did the container outlast the arguable more powerful society that somehow SEALED A GOD?! Why has the technology not been recreated (and how did they build the thing, anyway? How did it let them produce an artifact strong enough to seal it?)?!

The fact that they were able to reseal it at all bugs me too (even as important as it is to any story with a remotely good ending). Even with the strangely fine-after-all-this-time-AND-the-personal-attention-of-a-dark-god artifacts that could be reused, really, what truly stops the thing? They have no backups, the morons who made the system have no backups, I highly doubt that the locking sequence would be the same as the UNlocking sequence (and it always requires the willing sacrifice of the best and brightest of whatever irreplaceble guru/immortal-being-of-knowledge they have each time it's sealed, for further artificial importance and cliche reasons), etc.

And again, there are no backups, notes on "Don't open, ever!", and other warnings or helpful tools?! ARGH!

Not to mention that the Mites were supposed to guard the stupid things. Well, that worked great, didn't it! They try to blow up whoever finds them, but they only ever apparently delayed (or killed) the GOOD guys. The bad ones had no such trouble. The best way isn't to hide the crap, but to work with a society to keep the things the heck away from the S.E.I.A.C. (as disappointing as that is to EVERYONE who has ever watched Indiana Jones, because admittedly, this way IS more cool)!

And then, you killed off two main characters in a holding action. A minor one, with no apparent effect, in either case. This ignores the unholy numbers of redmanes that got whacked during the MiteToo's manipulations, the original destruction of their planet that even the Tree was unaware of, the damage from the second world eater ship, the "Demonstrations that I'm an Arse, by a generic villain" thing that happened to the Gari planet...

And I ALSO see that Starlight did nothing with a time spell at the end of all this. I mean, really. With all that's happened, it sounds perfectly set up for the whole "REboot Time and Kick Ass with Win and forekNowledge" (henceforth known as R.E.T.K.A.W.N. :D ) schtick, or just alive-ing everyone again. It's really depressing and more flat than a week-old soda if that sort of crowning moment of Deus Ex Temporam does not happen. That's why I'm mad. (and also because that's the way the really crappy stuff IRL happens. I don't like reading fiction about it)

Instead, they just sort of go all Emo and run off to hide or drown their sorrows. None of the others find immortality, I assume, despite the fact that Discord could just fingersnap them with it, apparently, among who knows how many other ways there are. So, what is going to keep those remaining even remotely sane?

Now I have to go rant about Wheel Of Time, Eragon, Game of Thrones, Divergent, Hunger Games, more others than I can remember or count...
Guess what THOSE have in common...

Alright. Sorry for ranting and/or yelling at you. I rather liked much of the story, but I feel that you missed out on a plot twist that would have made it so much better and redeemed the storyline for me. I just feel like it lost a lot of potential somewhere, and this makes me upset for what it could have been.

I will not be Disliking this story, however, in remembrance of the parts I enjoyed. Now I have to go have a cry...

[GMBlackjack]

8947070

Hey, I'm well aware of this story's problems. I definitely rushed it, trying to do too much in to small of a time, not working with what I had, and just doing whatever happened when I felt like it. Also the pacing's atrocious. It was so bad in some places I went back and changed events. Heh... Yeah. In my personal opinion virtually everything (save Pony Fantasy V) I've written is better than this.

Part of me thinks that, one day, I'll go back and re-write this story. But that's a long ways away, if it'll happen at all.

Haven't been ranted at this much through the whole thing though. Kudos for the long comment. Glad you stuck until the end.

-GM, master of shows.

[LostArchivist]

8947144
Again, it's mainly just the ending (losing the characters felt to me like part of a spirit-journey/challenge of perseverance thing (note: I know what I'm thinking of, but I can't find a good definition or even explanation. Just watch Men in Black III to see an example of what I was hoping to see, especially in regards to how he defeats the escaped alien trying to erase time), but that only holds if it was all revealed to be a dream or Retconjured away). Failing that, it becomes this, which isn't nearly so fun. The hidden-tree-of-harmony being shown to the little guy was quite a fun and awe-inspiring scene, and I liked the mental picture of all the floating forested moons or whatnots. I just wish that they had all survived to see it, and my personal preference that they had all become immortal or even the whole society had taken the blue pill. Imagine what they could do with a whole civilization of ageless...

Well, given a century or two, the Big Bad could be released, and promptly used as a chewtoy, for one...

[hawthornbunny]

My goodness. I happened upon this fic and thought "oh, that's an interesting premise, I'll give that a go". I didn't realize I was about to get hooked into maybe the best work of pony sci-fi I've ever read. Such an excellently-crafted and satisfying read, I loved it

[GMBlackjack]

9207051
Really? Well, THANKS, first off.

But yeah, I look back at this inexplicably 'popular' story of mine and furrow my brow - there's a lot of problems with pacing, character moments, etc. If this is the best pony sci fi you've read I think I've got some suggestions for you! I didn't write these, but they're excellent:

Letters to the Sun, one of the best stories on this site. Ever.

Arrow 18, a story on a typical concept with a nice twist.

And, of course, if you want something of MINE that I think is written better.... Well, of course, there's my magnum opus Songs of the Spheres which ALL OF YOU LOT need to read, but if you particularly liked this I'd suggest Stranger Magics or The Cuil Theory

Glad you enjoyed regardless,

-GM, master of mice.

[hawthornbunny]

9207099
Songs of the Spheres turns out already to be on my Read Later list (I guess I must have thought I'd find a spare week to read it ^^). I'll add those others too. Thanks!

[fanreader999999]

This story... has its moments. Just not enough of them.

[RoboRed]

This story had an interesting concept and on the whole I enjoyed it. Sci-fi stuff do be fun. But yeah...it does suffer from issues that a lot of the comments have already pointed out in enough detail on (and apparently a few more that later got edited out). Pacing was not particularly consistent, kinda weird early on imo before the Garilend encounter, and just rushed towards the end. Questionable writing decisions character deaths were made. There were some loopholes in logic, though some of that could be argued to differences in headcanon with commenters maybe idk. But anyways, another early work that was grown from. Did probably get you some attention from it being in the feature box a while back. Worth the read and learning experience.

On the side, I know a bit more multiverse lore, even if lesser and a couple degrees out there as far as major SotS stuff is concerned. Will it ultimately matter when the shit hits the fan? Ehh...probably not. My expectation is most likely if anything it'll be a few sentences of consequence once everything goes in-out topsy-turvey from the the predictions that my brain is crafting right now. Heck I went back and checked through what I've read and there's...not a whole lot even mentioned there already. Heck, Influence had a lot more references to this than SotS. Speaking of which, I'm really glad my brain decided to dump a good like 95-98% of what I read from major plot points here being talked about in the comments in Influence. (Not like I should have known the risk going in but c'mon people...)

[GMBlackjack]

11864928
Ah yes, yet another story I would not have recommended. Oh well.

I wonder if you're going to manage to dig up any of my other dirty laundry... Hmm...

-GM, master of 2012.

[RoboRed]

11864999
Oh I'm sure I might eventually. For the near future, though...