Rifts
The projector still ran long after the reels had spooled out, casting a dim glow on the wall of Rainbow Dash’s highly secret base, which was also the basement of the local schoolhouse. Being as school was out during the night, that gave Rainbow Dash enough time to watch at least one episode a night, and still have plenty of time leftover during the day to sleep.
Of course, that’s assuming she wasn’t watching the episode multiple times, to try and catch everything in it. She may have had a few incidents with barely enough time afterward to scramble out before the foals started to arrive, but the school cellar was the only place Dash could reach that would have a projector screen (aside from the library), and it was technically a public building so she had every right to be here, right?
Rainbow Dash finished today’s episode in time, flying home with a warm feeling in her heart and a smile on her face. She hadn’t even thought that particular event would be a Fluttershy-centric episode. Water crisis, intense athletic training, and spinning up a literal water spout, it had a lot of stuff Fluttershy had little involvement in at all. But the episode instead went into Fluttershy’s compassion for her friends, and her determination to overcome her fear in order to help, largely in part because she cared so much about Rainbow Dash. That, Rainbow Dash found, was pretty brilliant for a bunch of humans.
Back at her cloud house, Rainbow Dash found herself reflecting on Fluttershy’s experience. Rainbow’d felt just awful, when Fluttershy was shocked to have such a low wingpower. It was something Rainbow Dash never even had to deal with: being a weak flier. It had seemed like an amazing improvement to Rainbow Dash at the time, but Fluttershy thought it was no big deal, since it was still pretty weak. Dash wondered if Fluttershy really felt that way, or if it was more of a dramatization, but wasn’t sure how to ask her about it, without blowing the top off the whole “secret show watching” thing Rainbow Dash had going on.
Dash had to smile though, as she paused at the refrigerator for a late night—er, early morning snack, because no matter how weak a flyer Fluttershy was, she still made the difference in the end. Without her, Ponyville would have failed, and Cloudsdale would have had no water. Even Spitfire had said that she... wait a minute.
Rainbow Dash burst from her house in a brief eruption of rainbow in the pre-dawn morning. She skidded to a halt outside the Ponyville schoolhouse, looking around warily at how close it was to sunrise, and then used a wingtip to jimmy the cellar door open. Sneaking down there, Rainbow Dash uncovered the hidden projector and her cache of purloined reels, and hastily fiddled with the latest one, getting it set up in the projector again. Unspooling the tape to nearly its end, she turned on the projector, watching the image of the water spout ascending upwards, to the cheers of the ponies of Ponyville. And then—and then landing, and then greeting Fluttershy, and then Spitfire...
Her brow knotting, Dash exclaimed furiously, “Spitfire, you jerk!!”
Diplomatic negotiations with Yakyakistan went worse than expected in the fall of that year, though to be fair negotiations went really well. It’s just that everypony had some seriously high expectations, that weren’t quite in line with what the prince had been like. It could have been much, much worse, though admittedly in hindsight Yakyakistan went to war so often, it was hard to take seriously. But war averted, friendships formed, and princessly duties dealt with, Twilight had some time to herself, to relax inside her warm library, crack open a good book, and plot to defeat the evil humans stopping Rosy Pink from returning home.
Twilight had a simple plan. Set up a business in the human world under false pretenses, and use it to gain information about the mare known as Bruce Connell. She took a look at the remote networking services the humans had established, and saw that as ideal: the perfect business where you never had to show your face, and nobody had to know you were a pony.
Except for tax purposes, of course.
Now... Twilight was most certainly not planning on announcing to the human governments who she was, where she was, nor approximately how much money she made in a year. She wasn’t planning on opening up negotiations at all. She wanted to close the rift, and be done with it! So a certain subtle touch was needed to keep from stepping on any human toes, especially the tax collecting humans. What they didn’t know couldn’t hurt them, but Twilight was not the best candidate for keeping ponies—or humans—from knowing things.
“You want me to what, darling?”
“Start a business with me,” Twilight entreated earnestly to her industrious fellow unicorn friend, “In the human world.”
“Why in all things under sun and stars would I ever do anything like that?” Rarity said in exasperation.
“So that I can fool the humans into thinking I represent a legitimate business,” Twilight said, looking around and then whispering, “To get information on the real identity of Rosy Pink.”
Rarity tilted her head. “Oh, so you mean to...”
“Well,” Twilight said with the least innocent expression in her innocent, bright-eyed smile, “If she just happens to apply for employment, then we’ll have to ask for her references, and humans are really big on references. That’ll give us access to her history, her former identity, and whatever’s wrong with her life that is keeping her from going home.”
“Twilight, that is positively devlish, ” the alabaster unicorn said, peering at her friend through slitted eyes. A small smile made its way onto Rarity’s muzzle, and a guiltily indulgent laugh escaped her as she said, “I like it.”
With Rarity’s invaluable experience with running a business, among... other things, Twilight avoided many gotchas or rookie mistakes. It was Rarity’s idea to bring other humans into the fold, in order to have them deal with the in-person aspects of business ownership, all without being aware that Twilight and Rarity were not entirely there. Rarity had the idea to emphasize the secrecy, in order to cultivate a sense of mysterious allure. And that left it up to Twilight to figure out exactly what to sell.
She eventually decided to do something about the humans’ shambles of a society itself. They didn’t even have a way for friends to help each other, only governance and employers, so she decided to fix their economy, envisioning one like the modern Equestrian system, but taking advantage of the lightning based circuitry humans had developed. They could calculate logarithms at speeds you wouldn’t believe!
It would take a while to even get the business started, because first Twilight had to have a working system that was human machine compatible, and then she and Rarity had to communicate with the right people, all through a microscopic portal in somehuman’s apartment. A worrisome development were the humans themselves, their forensics teams investigating the missing pony—er—person. But nothing in their world needed to return to Equestria, so the portal was quite invisible on their end, and they seemed to lack thaumic detection equipment entirely, so ponies could project their conjurations through it right under the humans’ curiously flat noses.
It proved helpful even, when Twilight used that verse’s bizarre resonance between light and magnetism on the portable computers the human scientists had, to use them as Internet communication devices. Rarity had the thought that it would be bad for all Twilight’s communication to be traced specifically to that location, so they started working through relays, and using things called credit cards to gain more distant remote resources. Twilight expanded their farseeing as far as possible, and with a decent city block to work with, they had all the resources they needed to get access to the world wide web.
So it was in that context that Twilight with Rarity by her side finally experienced a chat channel.
Economancer: That is a terrible idea. Anyone could deconstruct the sum to expose the original payees.
Darjeeling: But how could they, if it was all added as an opaque sum?
Economancer: Why don’t you go take a college course in basic economics? You might learn something.
Fanpop1: fiat currency is literally cancer. We need the gold standard and we need it today
Darjeeling: Couldn’t you at least explain how it might not work?
Economancer: It’s so obvious I can’t help if you’re too stupid to figure it out.
Niceguy: WEAPONS FIRED OVER THE GAZA STRIP the Jews are at it again
Whatmeno: How can the USA continue to support the Israeli they are literally nazis
Economancer: Can we not talk about Israel for ten minutes, please?
Darjeeling: well FUKC YOU then sorry I even tried
SYSTEM: Darjeeling has been banned by Economancer (Language, motherfucker.)
...it wasn’t a tremendously good confidence boosting exercise.
Libraria: Does anyhuman know how I might learn of influential scholars in economic theory?
Economancer: Are you seriously trying to roleplay on #economics?
Libraria: No, just looking for resources to learn from. No roleplay going on here!
Fanpop1: try wikipedia :p
Economancer: We’re not going to do your homework for you, kid.
Libraria: I assure you darling, I’m merely looking for information.
SYSTEM: You have been banned from #economics by Economancer (back talk)
Okay, it was a very poor confidence boosting exercise.
“There is... at least... the suggestion to try wiki...pedia,” Rarity said uncertainly. She was uncertain about more than the conversation though, looking with worry at the back of her friend’s head. “Darling... what are you doing?”
“I’m trying to find the head administrator,” Twilight said, staring intently forward, shifting her horn field skillfully to utilize the human’s computer to search for one, “I need to submit a formal complaint. We were not back talking!”
“I don’t think you were going to get very far anyway, Twilight,” Rarity said dryly, “That bunch seemed rather very unfriendly.” Laying a soothing forehoof on Twilight’s withers, Rarity gently pulled Twilight away from the rift interface, saying, “Why don’t we just take a little break for tea, and then perhaps we can find what that one human said about wikipedia.”
Twilight sighed, and delighted her horn. Rarity was right, as always.
And in fact, Rarity was extremely right, because once the two did find Wikipedia, the article immediately hyper-linked to many citations, and many of the citations had an author. By contacting the authors of promising articles, Twilight was able to find one willing to hear out her proposal, and they were most definitely interested, if she could provide something that worked.
Apparently humans were very keen on ways to invest that didn’t rely on a central currency, which was what Twilight referred to as “friendship,” but humans seemed strangely leery of applying that word to economics. That was the missing piece that would give Twilight an “in.” So what she wanted was a working system by which people could invest in each other privately and electronically, not unlike friendship bennies, and then Twilight would have her business started.
Now all she had to do was learn how to program.
“Please Rosy, just hear me out—”
“No, Applejack,” Rosy said angrily, having been cornered in the market again by the earnest apple pony. “I don’t want anything to do with you, or your five friends. I’m done playing the game, and I’m just trying to live my life. Is that so wrong?”
“We were wrong!” Applejack pleaded, “Ah don’t unnerstand it, but you had your reasons an’ if we knew them, we’d have not even thought about doin’ that to you! Ah just wanna know why you keep ignorin’ us, especially Pinkie. You think she’s doin’ all that for her health?”
“Applejack, I—really want to believe you,” Rosy winced, “But it’s really not anything you should worry about. It’s just not safe for...for me to hang out with the six of you.”
“The what of us? Why ain’t it safe?” Applejack asked in confusion.
“Because,” Rosy said, then looked around suspiciously as if they were being watched. Leaning towards Applejack, she said in a tight whisper, “You and your friends are special. You are the—the focus of the story. You have to act in certain ways, and things go... wrong when you try to deviate. I don’t fit in your story and—and things aren’t going to work out if I’m with you. You just... be yourself, live your own life, and just let me fade into the background. That’s the only way I’ll be safe!”
“Ah just wanna be friends with you,” Applejack said pleadingly, “You’re a good worker an’ a fine pony, an’—ah just do, okay?”
“Even if Twilight hates you for it?” Rosy asked coldly.
“I—no, ah... Twilight ain’t gonna... hate me for it,” Applejack said weakly, but she knew full well that Twilight had some serious beef with Rosy. “Land sakes, ah don’t wanna have to choose between you and her!”
“You don’t have to choose,” Rosy said, turning her tail to Applejack, “Because I’m choosing for you. Goodbye, Applejack.”
“But—but...” Applejack said in vague horror and desperation, “Cain’t ya at least tell me... why you cain’t go back home?”
Rosy looked back at Applejack with such sadness. “I’m sorry,” she said, trotting a few steps away. “Ask—” she paused and looked back, worried. “Ask Fluttershy,” she said tensely. “And don’t... don’t hate me for it, please.”
Then Rosy galloped off into the crowd again.
Applejack didn’t sell many apples that day. She was too flustered about what Rosy said to her, about what it meant. How many other ponies were avoiding Applejack, just because of who she was friends with? Just because of who she was?
Weird things happened around Applejack and her friends, it was true, but she still thought of herself as a nice normal, average, approachable earth pony. Wasn’t she? Applejack felt like she was trapped, like the thing that made her ‘her’ had singled her out somehow, and made her act in certain ways, like some kinda puppet on strings. Applejack couldn’t stand that thought. She just wanted to be free, but what was even holding her? There were no bars, there was no trap, just Applejack and her ordinary not-so-ordinary life.
She wasn’t even sure she wanted to ask Fluttershy, at this point, if she could even track that pony down. For Fluttershy was getting frustratingly hard to find...
“Oh Fluttershy, I honestly don’t know what to do about Twilight Sparkle!” Rarity said as the two of them relaxed calmly in a warm bath surrounded by wooden walls. The two of them were in a most rustic location, but it was clear the ponies who kept this place did not skimp on the simple comforts of heated water and the beauty of nature. At any other time, Rarity might have objected to the dull decor and the simplistic architecture, but right now she found she couldn’t give a damn. She was here with her friend, and everything was just fine.
“You don’t know what to do about anything right now,” Fluttershy said in a gently teasing tone.
Rarity laughed and said, “Too true. I must say I had my doubts about this retreat of yours, but it’s just as they said. I don’t think I’ve ever felt so relaxed, so... unencumbered by my obligations.”
“It is such a wonderful place,” Fluttershy agreed, “I’m not sure why, but they said that’s to be expected. The ponies who run it seem to know what they’re doing.”
“It’s so wonderful what they’re doing here!” Rarity replied with a serene smile, “I would never have thought it possible, and yet here we are. Free as two sparrows!”
“I’m so glad you gave it a try,” Fluttershy smiled, “It is a very um... unusual thing to do. I was worried you would be upset. They said it was very important you give it a try, otherwise you might start judging me, or even fearing me!”
“I’m glad you did then,” Rarity remarked gratefully, “I would never want to be judging you, or fearing you. I confess I was afraid at the time, but you were my good friend and I knew I could trust you.”
Fluttershy giggled at that, and said, “Could trust me.”
“Oh don’t be silly,” Rarity said, splashing at her, “I can trust you even more now, by our shared experience! What a wonderful experience it is too, to finally be free. And so healthy for our complexion!”
“They say so many wonderful things about it,” Fluttershy agreed, dripping, “I’m so glad they’re willing to share it with us.”
“Shame it only is for one week at a time,” Rarity said with a sigh, “But it is nice to be able to get away from it all again, even for just a little while.”
“You said it,” Fluttershy replied with a smile.
The two lay there a few more minutes, before Fluttershy asked, “Were you saying something about Twilight?”
“Oh, yes!” Rarity remembered. “Do recall I was helping her with my particular area of... expertise. Dreadfully stressful, I assure you.”
“Not like here,” Fluttershy said cheekily.
“Not at all like here,” Rarity agreed. “Anyway, Twilight has become even more obsessed with those humans than ever. I think she’s forgotten that this was merely a... mission for sneaking things, whatever you call that. She’s been talking with smart humans, and having the most fun she could have. I respect that, truly I do.”
Sighing, Rarity went on, “But it gets so tedious to deal with her sometimes. I want nothing to do with the human world, and yet my talents... are needed. That’s why I like this place even more, because I can finally stand up for myself, instead of only doing what I am supposed to do.”
A third party came walking into the bathhouse, leading the two mares to look up at him. “Hello ladies,” the white stallion said calmly, “Are you enjoying yourselves?”
Fluttershy was reluctant to speak, so Rarity said, “Why yes we are... em... you. Just worrying about the outside world, as one does.”
“There’s so much to worry about out there!” he replied with concern in his cool blue eyes, “Not here though. It’s always a relief to come back to our little community, where you can finally be yourself.”
Fluttershy and Rarity both nodded, Rarity saying, “Oh yes indeed,” while the butter yellow pegasus murmured something inconsequential.
“Will you be signing on for another week of relaxation and new friends?” he asked.
“Well, I don’t see why not,” Rarity replied, “I’m sure I’ve something terribly important regarding dresses and... hats I suppose, but I’m sure it can wait just a little bit longer.” Looking at Fluttershy, she asked, “What about you? Are your animal friends being cared for?”
“Oh, I suppose so,” Fluttershy said hesitantly, “But another week would be wonderful. How much trouble could they possibly be in?”
“The problems out there aren’t really problems. The only problem is our attitude towards them,” the stallion pointed out. “If you do try to return, and find yourself overwhelmed, just remember you can always come back to us.”
“Thank you very much,” Fluttershy said with a small smile, “We surely will.”
“I do hope you stay, because if you stay on another week, we can introduce you to the next level in friendship,” he said practically.
“Next level?” Rarity asked in confusion.
“Oh yes,” he said, “You’ve shown yourselves as excellent members of our community, and there’s so much more that we could be doing for each other! Normal members don’t see our most important locations, because well... there are ponies who aren’t ready for the truth we share. But you two are clearly ready to learn. All you have to do is sign on for another week.”
“That’s wonderful!” Rarity said in excitement, “It sounds positively um... bad but in a good way. Where do we sign up?”
“Enjoy your bath,” he replied kindly, heading for the door. “I can show you everything you need to know when you’re finished.”
“Thank you so much, mister—em...” Rarity wanted to thank him properly, but had to trail off to silence, before asking, “Sorry, what was your name again?”
“Double Diamond,” he replied with a smile. “I look forward to seeing you later, misses Rarity and Fluttershy.”
So Rarity had gone off to do her own thing, but that was fine. Everything was fine. It wasn’t anything Twilight Sparkle couldn’t account for. Just more variables to take into account, all very accountable variables. Plenty of the humans Twilight contacted were equally capable in business as her good friend, and they had a brilliant scheme for introducing this into the economy, once she had worked all the bugs out of her prototype design.
She had a lot of work ahead of her, but once Twilight applied a find-the-way charm to the tangential eigenvalues, all the pieces seemed to fall into place. Humans had terrifying incendiary technologies on a scale that could blanket whole cities, but they didn’t even have a quick way to factor large numbers! Twilight Sparkle was going to totally wreck that world.
Applejack stuck her nose in the picnic basket and pulled out the graham crackers, and then the mugs. She placed each item with her mouth onto the flat stone next to a roaring fire pit, courtesy of hers truly. Into the mugs, she poured a pot full of piping hot water, mixing smoothly with the chocolate they contained.
Her friend provided that, along with the chocolate bars, and the marshmallows. Applejack speared two of the large marshmallows on metal skewers she’d brought along. Then she looked up from them, meeting the eyes of the only other pony who’d shown up for their weekly campfire... again.
With the baby blue eyes of Pinkie Pie looking back at Applejack evenly, the party mare asked without hesitation, “Time to go save our friends?”
Applejack smiled grimly, and stood facing her, agreeing, “Time to go save our friends.”
With an incredibly fuzzy sweater to keep her warm from the cold, Pinkie Pie bounced out of Sugarcube Corner with a mission in mind. Three of her best friends had gone missing, and Twilight was being Twilight again, so it was up to Pinkie Pie to find and rescue Rainbow Dash, while Applejack went looking for Fluttershy.
Applejack needed to find Fluttershy, because where she went, Rarity was often known to follow, and also because her critters had been bothering Applejack’s farm lately to an unusual degree. All their friends were important to find, but Pinkie was searching herself for Rainbow Dash, because Rainbow Dash had a way with words for getting Twilight Sparkle out of a funk and listening to reason again.
Whenever Pinkie Pie tried to do that herself, it just ended up with a lot of screaming, panic and attacking hydras.
Unfortunately, the great majority of places to find Rainbow Dash were in the sky, and both Pinkie Pie and Applejack were earth ponies. Fortunately, Pinkie Pie was Pinkie Pie, and Pinkie Pie happened to be friends with another earth pony who loved the sky. Granted, Pinkie was friends with almost every pony in Ponyville, but this one shared Pinkie’s love of getting high, and pursued it with a passion.
“Thanks again, Cherry!” Pinkie said happily, waving behind her as she pumped her hindlegs on the pedals. The pedal-copter was the finest in Equestrian aeronautical technology, which actually wasn’t all that great since most earth ponies liked staying on the ground, and pegasi already could fly. But for eccentric mechanists like Cherry Berry, the sky wasn’t the limit!
“Have fun, Pinkie!” Cherry waved back as Pinkie ascended. Then Pinkie was in the sky. Which was actually really empty! That’s the funny thing about skies, is that there’s so much more room up here, because you can put things higher or lower, whereas on the ground everything has to be at ground height.
Checking Dashie’s normal hideouts revealed little to nothing. Her napping clouds around town had dissipated, and her lake dive cloud was unoccupied. It was definitely time for Pinkie Pie to step up her game, if she wanted to find her friend, and in doing so probably save the world again, somehow.
Pinkie arrived at the Ponyville Weather Bureau, standing up from the copter long enough to recite a little ditty that Twilight had helped her with, when the mistress of magic had realized the implications of an earth pony and a pegasus being friends. “My little hoofsies are allowed to walk a proud cloudy cloud,” Pinkie said, dancing on the hoofsies in question. These ditties were so much fun, because they made it easy to remember how to move the magic in her spellwork, and they sounded so cute to say! All Pinkie had to do was say it just to herself, then pretend to kick the cloud, and then the cloud... allowed, hee hee!
She walked into the bureau, slammed a hoof on the cloud desk, and cloud shouted, “I demand to speak with the manager!”
The secretary looked kind of shocked, so Pinkie had to cover her own mouth and giggle, “Sorry, I always wanted to say that. Do you know where I can find a pony called Rainbow Dash?”
“How are you—here?!” the mare said incredulously, wings half-spread.
“I dunno,” Pinkie replied noncommitally, “But if you tell me where Dashie is today, then I won’t be here anymore. I’ll be there!”
“I—um...” the purple mare looked away shyly, and fiddled with some paper on her desk. Cloud-paper? No probably just regular paper. Making paper out of clouds sounded like a really terrible idea. “Is she on the—”
“Oh, yeah,” Pinkie interrupted, “She’s on the alpha one weather squad, and she should be working today!”
“Oh, well, t-that’ll mean she’s at the cloud collection, in sector 3B um...” the pegasus pointed to an overhead map of Ponyville on the wall, helpfully divided into sectors.
“Thank you so much!” Pinkie said giving the mare a delighted hug, then bouncing away on the surprisingly bouncy cloud material. That mare sure had been surprised to see an earth pony way up here! They probably didn’t get many who visited. Pinkie filed that in the back of her head under “Potential cloud party,” and hopped back into the pedal-copter.
A swift pedalling later, and the cloud collector ponies came into view, collecting clouds and compacting them into cloud containers for later use. Pinkie pulled a megaphone out of her party space and shouted, “Hey! Has anypony seen Rainbow Dash!”
One of the pegasi, a pretty pink and yellow one flew up to Pinkie’s copter saying, “No! Did something happen to her? She’s been falling asleep at work, and sometimes not even showing up at all, and she won’t tell us why!”
Pinkie’s smile froze at that last bit, and she repeated uneasily, “She won’t tell you why?”
“She says it’s... important for the safety of all Equestria or something,” the mare replied uncertainly, “She hasn’t really been herself, lately.”
“Hmm... is it possession, or obsession?” Pinkie pondered.
“I don’t know!” the green pegasus yelped, answering the rhetorical, “You think she might be possessed?!”
Pinkie Pie wasn’t really the sort of pony who pondered silently.
“Don’t you worry your head over it,” Pinkie said, reaching forward and patting the mare on the head, “With Detective Pinkie on the case, we’ll have this all cleared up in no time!”
“Thanks, Pinkie Pie,” the mare said with a smile, “It’s so much easier on us when she’s around to help with the weather.”
“No problem, Lavender,” Pinkie said, “You have any idea where she might be?”
“She’s at her house before work sometimes,” the mare replied, “But not usually this late in the day.”
Pinkie was pretty sure Lavender was right, when Pinkie went and checked Rainbow’s house. “Rainbow Dash!” Pinkie Pie called from every window, but it looked like the rainbow pegasus simply was not home. Pinkie thought Dash might have been home with a cold, or home sleeping off a big party, or home scared about something she didn’t want to admit, but nope! The house was empty! Knocking on the door did no good, and it was locked up tight!
Walking through the wall next to the door, Pinkie Pie looked around inside Dashie’s house with concern. It didn’t look like there was a struggle, or very much of anything going on in here. The bed was unmade, there were soda cans on the cloud floor, and it was pretty much exactly as messy as Rainbow Dash ever kept her house. The refrigerator had been stocked recently, so that was a good sign, but Rainbow Dash’s mail was piled up on her cloud desk entirely unread and unopened!
Pinkie looked through the letters on a sudden hunch, and crowed, “A-ha!” with great triumphance! One of the letters was a party invitation. A party invitation that Pinkie Pie had written and delivered herself! Dash never did explain why she didn’t show up to that one, and that was all Pinkie needed to find her.
To an ordinary pony, the letter laid before Pinkie Pie in Rainbow Dash’s house might have seemed like just a letter. But to Pinkie Pie, it was a smoking gun, whatever a gun was. Her friend was in trouble, and Dash hadn’t even read the invitation. Sure it was expected, because Dashie forgot to read her invitations sometimes, but Pinkie was a mare of particular skills, and those skills did not discriminate.
Planting a hoof to either side of the letter, and framing the invitation letter in a thought form, Pinkie Pie chanted,
The invitation lies forgotten,
The pony isn’t here.
The missing pony we all sought and
Wish that they were drawing near.Rainbow Dash, I’d like to see
Come to celebrate, and how!
This invitation needs to be
Wherever she is right now.
A breeze blew away the letter then, sending it fluttering out the window. “Yes!” Pinkie cheered, zipping outside to board her pedal copter again. Unmooring it from the clouds, she flew around to the window, and spotted the invitation still fluttering away. Descending after it, Pinkie Pie was mildly surprised to see that it was falling to the ground. She was genuinely surprised at just what ground it fluttered to.
“Ah’m tellin’ ya girls, our schoolhouse is haunted!” a little apple filly told her two best friends.
“Ghosts aren’t real,” a small pumpkin colored one replied. “...are they?”
“Maybe we should just go home,” the scared looking pudgy white filly said, “I think something’s under there, and I don’t want to know what it is.”
“Hiya!” Pinkie Pie exclaimed, at the three fillies hovering worriedly over the door to the schoolhouse’s cellar. The three fillies screamed and ran, their bright peals making Pinkie’s ears fold back as the three panicked.
“It’s just me!” Pinkie exclaimed nervously, climbing the rest of the way out of the snowbank, running from filly to filly, trying to calm them down, “It’s just Pinkie Pie don’t worry!”
“Oh, thank goodness, ” Sweetie Belle was the first one to realize.
“What’re you doin’ at the school?” Apple Bloom asked with big, adorable orange eyes.
“I’m looking for—” Pinkie said, as Scootaloo cut in eagerly with,
“Are you looking for the ghost?!”
“Yupperoonie!” Pinkie said with a wide smile, giving Scootaloo a pat on the head.
As Scootaloo backed away, rubbing at her mane and unflattening her ears, the little Sweetie Belle asked seriously, “Are you going to scare away the ghost?”
Pinkie shook her head at that statement, saying, “No no no. Don’t be silly. You don’t scare away ghosts.”
“Then what do you do?” Apple Bloom asked curiously, as a familiar ditty started up.
“When I was a little filly, and the sun was going down,” Pinkie sang to the three of them confidentially. The song went as one would expect, and with the fillies laughing and calm, Pinkie asked them,
“So did you hear a big, spooky ghost? Or did you see a big spooky ghost? What’s been going on?”
“It’s real weird!” Apple Bloom whined uneasily. “There’s been noises in the cellar downstairs, and whenever Miss Cheerilee comes in they get all quiet-like.”
“And Truffle got here really early in the morning once,” Sweetie Belle said, “And he saw a shadowy figure going into the cellar!”
“We think it might be the Pony of Shadows!” Scootaloo said worriedly, “And we don’t know how to make it leave our school alone!”
“Welll I have an idea, but I need your help,” Pinkie said, eyeing the cellar entrance for any signs of movement. “I need you three to go open that cellar, and scare out the ghost. I can take care of it then, to make sure it finds its f i n a l resting place~”
“You can do that??” Apple Bloom asked, starry eyed.
“If your cellar isn’t ghost free by tomorrow, I’ll eat my shorts!” Pinkie replied cheerfully.
“But you’re not wearing shorts,” Scootaloo said suspiciously, squinting at Pinkie Pie’s snow dusted but unclothed rump.
“I have shorts at home, silly!” Pinkie said, waving a dismissive hoof. Squinting increased.
“Alright, they’re made out of chocolate,” Pinkie admitted guiltily, “But I’ll still eat them!”
“And... all we have to do is open the cellar?” Sweetie Belle asked.
Pinkie nodded, saying loudly, “Yup! I bet the ghost will come flying right out, all covered in a spooky ghost sheet!”
Pinkie stood back while the fillies cautiously approached the cellar. Crouching down and stretching to reach it, the little hoof of Scootaloo had barely pushed open the cellar when the doors flew open, and a strange specter entirely covered in a sheet came flying out of the cellar! The foals all shrieked, but the ghost was gone, vanished over the rooftops of Ponyville. The three fillies then went back to look inside the cellar entrance, now quiet and unghostified. Most fillies would have run away, but the SMS had a nose for adventure!
“Well, I have to go,” Pinkie told them, “I’ll go teach that silly ghost to leave you cute little fillies alone.”
“Cute?” Scootaloo asked in a hurt tone. Sweetie Belle just giggled shyly at the compliment.
“Cute, and brave, ” Pinkie clarified with a wink. Then she was off, aimlessly bouncing through Ponyville.
It wasn’t long before Rainbow Dash landed right in front of Pinkie Pie. “Hey, thanks for the save,” Rainbow Dash said in relief, tossing her brightly colored mane, as well as a sheet over her shoulder, “Those fillies really had me cornered there!”
“Why were you playing in the school cellar?” Pinkie asked curiously.
“Because they’ve got a projector screen?” Rainbow Dash replied. “U-uh, n-not that I’m saying I took Twilight’s projector or anything. That’d be silly, ha ha ha ha!
“...ha.”
“But if you did,” Pinkie said slyly, “Then what’d you be projecting?”
“Oh, n-not much. Just you know... anything I wanted to... watch,” Rainbow Dash replied carefully. “But you didn’t um...” she yawned heavily, and Rainbow Dash actually looked pretty terrible. Bags under her eyes, droopy tail, slumped withers, she hadn’t been getting enough sleep, lately. “Maybe I was just in the mood for an underground... nap?” she tried.
“Makes sense to me!” Pinkie replied confidently. “Well, next time you underground nap, try to do it when the foals aren’t at the schoolhouse.”
“I know, just...” Rainbow Dash yawned again, “Be sure to do ...that,” she said sleepily.
“So, you didn’t come to the campfire this week and me and Applejack were worried,” Pinkie said a little seriously.
“You and Applejack? ” Rainbow Dash asked vaguely with an unfocused look, “You went on a road trip?”
“What? Um... not really, we just... trotted out to the hills north of town,” Pinkie said, a little confused, “For our weekly campfire, remember?”
“Oh, yeah, that,” Dash said. Then her bloodshot eyes widened and she said, “Oh! Yeah! That!”
“It’s okay Dashie,” Pinkie Pie told her calmly. “I know you’ve been busy. But we’re starting to worry about you, and we need your help to get Twilight out of—”
“What about Twilight’s projector?” Rainbow Dash asked, tensing up, “I don’t know what you’re talking about! It’s not like I was... the one who um...” Pinkie winced, but it looked like Dashie wasn’t going to try to make that True. It was just a slip of the tongue.
“Don’t worry about it, Dashie,” Pinkie said, nuzzling her chin over Rainbow Dash’s ears. The petite pegasus was too tired to even protest that, her body relaxing at Pinkie’s touch. “Just don’t miss the next campfire, okay?”
“Yeah I can... totally won’t miss the next...” and then Rainbow Dash started to lightly snore.
Pinkie Pie would have gently carried Dashie to bed, but you couldn’t carry a pony on your back and use the pedal-copter, and Rainbow Dash’s house remained, as always, in the sky. Plus it was actually time for Rainbow Dash to be at work, so Pinkie just gently woke her and reminded her, and Rainbow Dash went rocketing off on her own, to attend to her weather duties.
Meanwhile, Pinkie Pie set up an ambush.
The sun had gone down, the pedal-copter had been returned, and Pinkie Pie was almost beginning to run out of cupcakes, when across the basement, she heard the whispery clicks of somepony jimmying the lock to the schoolhouse cellar door. Pinkie was hiding behind an unused printing press that was in here for some reason, and she switched to her night vision goggles, watching a green image of Rainbow Dash sneaking around the cellar. The pegasus gathered some things in her wings from a hiding spot underneath a tarp (very clever!) and fiddled with getting something on a podium. Rainbow Dash was adjusting something on it...
Then Pinkie Pie’s vision went white.
Then she took off her night vision goggles.
Pinkie Pie saw that Rainbow Dash had started up a projector! Twilight’s missing projector, no doubt! Ooh that thievey pegasus was in so much trouble once Twilight found out. She’d probably lecture Rainbow Dash all day! Pinkie was more concerned with her friend’s well-being than any miscarriage of justice, so what she did was listen to the sound crystal, not quite able to see the picture from her hiding spot back here.
It was pleasant song playing, that reminded Pinkie Pie of dust bunnies for some reason, and then a bunch of ponies were talking, but it sounded kind of muffled. Pinkie picked up on the distinctive voice of Twilight, saying, “Cupcake and Carrot Cake must be so proud!” which made very little sense as baked treats were not known for having a very big ego. Then Rarity was mumbling something like “fill your colt,” and then someone with a really squeaky voice was talking excitedly, who sounded oddly familiar.
Froghoofing silently over to right behind Rainbow Dash, Pinkie Pie reared up, took in a breath, then jumped forward saying, “Hi Rainbow Dash! Whatcha watch—”
Rainbow Dash jumped so high she landed on the basement ceiling, which was the underside of the ground floor, but Pinkie hardly noticed. Instead she was staring at the maternity ward in Ponyville General, being projected up on the projector screen. It wasn’t just any day at the maternity ward though. It was a day that happened... years ago, yet Pinkie Pie remembered it well. Mr. Cake was there, revealing a tiny infant pegasus, saying,
“Meet our son, Pound Cake.”
“I...is this a... a home movie?” Pinkie Pie asked uneasily, as it continued to reveal baby foals. And then Mr. Cake said something that struck her as very odd.
“My great, great, great, great, grandfather was a unicorn, and Cup Cake’s great aunt second cousin twice removed was a pegasus. That makes sense, right?”
“D–d–did Mr. Cake just say that—I mean he thought that the twins weren’t... his?” Pinkie asked in serious worry. They were his foals... weren’t they?
“I know!” Rainbow Dash whispered excitedly from up there on the ceiling, “It was like he thought they were the mailpony’s foals!”
“But... but...” and Pinkie remembered, seeing herself go face first into the 0 days old birthday cake, but after that...
“This is the show! ” Pinkie Pie whispered anxiously, as the theme song started playing. “How did you get this?”
“S–shoot, sorry Pinkie, I...” Rainbow Dash swooped down and covered up the projector lens. “I’ll shut it off. You weren’t supposed to see this!”
“Wait—” Pinkie started, but the song cut out, and the picture froze. “Wait I want to—” This time Pinkie froze.
“You... want to watch?” Rainbow Dash asked, eyeing Pinkie Pie warily. “You remember what happened the last time, right?”
“Do you have that?” Pinkie Pie asked hopefully. “That... one? About our mark stories?”
“Yeah, but I haven’t watched it,” Rainbow Dash said. “You were really upset when we saw that stuff. I don’t really understand why, but... that’s what happened.”
“C-c-can we watch it?” Pinkie squeaked out.
“Why do you want to?” Rainbow Dash asked with a strained grimace. “It made you cry!”
“I know...” Pinkie fidgeted, “But I was just... I’ve never been able to... I just want to... see them again,” she mumbled.
“What?” Rainbow Dash asked, crooking an ear.
“I thought I’d never see them again,” Pinkie Pie explained more audibly. “They... you know. I only have pictures left. Pictures that don’t ...move and talk.”
“Pinkie, are you sure?”
“I promise I won’t cry. I won’t... cry as much. It just caught me by surprise then, and I hadn’t thought about them in so long,” Pinkie said, giving a soft smile as she assured Rainbow Dash, “I’m not like I used to be. I’m better now.”
“I don’t really know how you used to be,” Rainbow Dash said, sidling up to Pinkie Pie with worry etched in the tilt of her ears. “Remember when you were talking to rocks? That scared me, Pinkie Pie.”
“I used to be—” Pinkie’s hoof shot up to her shoulders, and she gulped, “I used to be in a... a hospital.”
“So you... were really injured?” Dash tried. “I don’t get why you’d be worried about that.”
“No, not a—yes,” Pinkie sighed. “Yes I was injured,” she said, rubbing at her shoulders. “But not in my body. In my... heart.”
“Ohh,” Rainbow said in realization. Then she flapped up nervously into the air, saying, “...oh.”
Pinkie turned to face her saying, “I’m not like that anymore, and I got better except for a few hiccups here and there. The Ponyville psychiatric hospital helped me, until I was better enough to help myself. So um... I can watch it. I just got caught by surprise.”
“Well...” Rainbow Dash said warily, “Okay, but not that episode, not right away. You haven’t even seen most of these, and some of them are incredible! That’ll help you uh... warm up to it.”
Pinkie smiled from ear to ear saying, “Ohhh thank you, Rainbow Dash! Thank you for thinking about me. I promise I won’t disappoint you, and I’m sooo curious about the other episodes too, if you liked them. What about the one you were watching just now?”
Rainbow Dash glanced at the projector and blanched saying, “Uh... probably not that one either.”
“Why not?” Pinkie asked, tilting her head with such innocent blue eyes.
“It was uuh... we all have bad days,” Rainbow Dash said diplomatically, “And this one was about you mostly, on a really bad day.”
“Which bad day?” Pinkie asked skeptically.
“Remember when the Cakes asked you to babysit the twins?” Rainbow Dash replied.
Pinkie’s eyes got really big.
“Oooh, we have to watch that one!” she said, zipping up to the projector, and poring over it excitedly. “How do you get the audio crystal to sync with the playback?” she asked. “This is gonna be so amazing!”
“Wait, so you do want to watch that episode?” Dash said, hovering over her shoulder. “Why would you want to? It makes nothing but fun at you!”
“It sounds absolutely hilarious,” Pinkie Pie said with a giggle snort. “If the humans saw even half of what I did there...”
“Well okay, Pinkie,” Rainbow Dash said, “But don’t say I didn’t warn you. Oh you have to align it with the multiplexer there, see?”
“Makes perfect sense,” Pinkie Pie replied agreeably.
Rainbow Dash felt like laughing aloud in relief. It was even better watching the episode with Pinkie Pie there. Pinkie took all the jabs at her character like a champ, and laughed her head off even when they showed the scene where she only managed to get the diaper on herself. Also she glamoured up some popcorn, which was tasty, if not very filling.
“I guess you were right, Pinkie,” Rainbow Dash said after the credits rolled, dipping her head in apology, “Still, I can’t believe you actually liked it.”
“Well, it was a lot of fun watching it with you~” Pinkie Pie said with a friendly nuzzle. “I remember how that day went, so I wasn’t worried. Back then, when I was so bad with the foals, that I managed to trigger a magic surge in a pegasus, and with Pumpkin Cake I just... wow. It made me feel like you, for once.”
“Like me?” Rainbow repiled in surprise.
“Yeah, you’re special. Like a super special pegasus from that special institute, researching how to make a better pony,” Pinkie said, which made Rainbow Dash look away, and her ears go straight back. They relaxed back up though, as Pinkie Pie continues, “You are the best pony, and that makes you different from others, and that makes you upset, even though it is really cool. I know you really want to be accepted, even if you can’t quite be normal. I felt like that when I tried foalsitting, so it helped me understand you.”
“How did foalsitting make you feel like... that?” Rainbow Dash said.
She almost said “me.”
“See, I always had more ‘spooky earth powers’ than even most earth ponies,” Pinkie replied blithely, “But I wasn’t a special experiment or anything, just an accident. That night really showed me that I was special, and it showed me how being special can be a problem.”
“I just wanted to see the look on Mr. Cake’s face when both of his foals started flying around his head,” Rainbow Dash snickered.
“I dunno, I was too busy dodging plush animals and being levitated to really pay attention,” Pinkie said sheepishly, “Also Mrs. Cake was kinda in my face and saying WHAT DID YOU DOOO”
Rainbow Dash blinked. “Wow,” she said, “You do a really good angry Mrs. Cake impression.”
“I know, right?” Pinkie giggled, “But that’s why I stick to nurturing pastries and not children. The experience really gave me a taste of something you deal with every day.
Rainbow Dash rolled her eyes saying, “I don’t deal with it every day, just when somepony needs a hero, and I’m the only pony who can do it. That hardly even happens anymore, because you girls really are special. We do stuff! Here, lemme show you.”
One season 2 episode later, and Pinkie was left staring open mouthed at the screen.
“Can they... can they do that to you?” she asked Rainbow Dash, aghast.
“Ha!” Dash laughed at her wide eyed friend’s astonishment, “You should see the ones about Spike. They totally ruin his character!”
“And you’re not upset?” Pinkie said, still astonished, “But... but you were mowing the lawn! And—and plugging dams with your hoof!”
“Well, to be fair I did knock down the dam...” Rainbow Dash said sheepishly, “But it doesn’t matter whether this was perfectly accurate. It was hilarious!”
“Show a Spike one!” Pinkie said, “I wanna see what you mean!”
One episode later and they were both flat on their backs with laughter, Rainbow Dash more sympathetically than anything.
“The Spike...” Pinkie Pie gasped, “The Dragon... Code ...” and that triggered another wave of laughter.
“Did he just scribble that on the spot?” Rainbow Dash crowed.
“I wonder what really happened,” Pinkie said, staring at the frozen credits, as if their strange language would divulge their secrets.
“Not failing to make a pie, that’s for sure,” Rainbow Dash chuckled, “You’d have to ask one of those two for details, but I do remember Spike telling the story, and he said he didn’t just run away from the timber wolves. He set them on fire!”
“Ooh, because they’re made out of wood!” Pinkie Pie said, wide-eyed, “That’s really smart!”
“Eh, not really,” Rainbow Dash said with a shrug. “Because then he was being chased by timber wolves, on fire.”
“Show me another one!” Pinkie said hopping excitedly.
“Maybe we should do all of season 2,” Rainbow Dash said speculatively, “The show gets less accurate, in the later seasons, but season 1 is practically ancient history. Besides... we were gonna hold off on watching that one episode in season 1.”
The light from the projector continued to emit dimly from the basement window underneath the schoolhouse, all through the night.
I think things are going well. 
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I really like where you are going with your worldbuilding.
so is this story an AU because the setting varies from canon in some significant way or because it branches off from a previous season?
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It's an AU because there's a rift leading to an alternate universe, like, right over there.
interesting chapter, I feel that Twilight really looks like a massive hypocrite for taking such an interest in the human word, and was such a trough opposer to continue exploring the rift with such a dogmatic zeal to to stop the scientist for all exploration of the world; I am sure the researchers will remember that for a while. I wonder what will Double Diamond is in Ponyville? I am surprised that How Pinky is trying to deal with her past with the series and I like that Rainbow Dash and her are loving the series so much, I hope they will try to to convince Twilight to show it at the public at large one day. Still, it is a pleasant thought that all this his happening over Twilight's muzzle. It doesn't seem that the Mane six remember him so I guess they haven't meet Our Town or Starlight Glimmer yet. I will be looking forward to the next chapter.
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Hypocrisy is what happens when you try to go against what's in your nature.
How would they ever have met Starlight Glimmer?
I don't suppose you plan on talking about Equestria Girls and Sunset Shimmer, do you?
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Thanks for clarifying
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what would you call it then, if I might ask?
Twilight
Twilight please
Twilight please
Twilight
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LA LA LA I CAN'T HEAR YOU LA LA LA
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No, you were right to call it hypocrisy. Twilight doesn't even realize it...
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np
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You've reached the Twilight Is Doing It Again report line. Please listen to the full message for our options have changed. Para español enter la primera uno. If you'd like to hear what Twilight is doing now, please press two. If you'd like to hear the Twilight-is-Doing-It-Again mission statement, please press three. If you know your party's extension, please enter it now. If you would like to repeat these options, please press 0.
Thank you for your time. Goodbye!
*dial tone*
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g̺̻͖̹o̱̙̩̺̲̣̮͎̱͢͝d̡̧̤̝̜̗̬̺͓͡ͅ ͈̯̖̥f̷̻͔̘͖͡͝ͅừ̤̰c̷̨̥̻k̵̡̫͍̲̝̲͕̼̖͜i̩̯̼͈͎̳ņ̤͙g̘̕ ̶̭̱͟d̡͡҉̫a̞̱̮̗̹̘̝̠ͅṃ̫̖̯͍͔̤̙̭́ņ͕͍̮ ̭͝ì̛̘̼̖̯͓̯̻̼t͏͖̲̰ ̸͏̬̦̘̱̘͢T͖̞̝̬̺͖̠̘̞w͏̬͕͉̜̥i̢͉̥͎͞l̵̴̝̳̫͡i̤͓͍g̨̨̥̠̭͓ḩ̤̙̼̦̮t̷̪̤͢
Hm, does the school not have a projector too? I suppose it's cheaper to have two screens than two screens and two projectors, and the projector can just be moved between the library and school as needed; Ponyville is a small town.
"expected in the fall of this year, though"
"that year"?
"she was, nor approximately"
"or"?
"but Twilight was not the best candidate for keeping ponies—or humans—from knowing things."
...Oh, this should be good. So who is Twilight going to be roping into her little interversal crime spree, then? :D
Ah. :D
"laugh escaped her as Rarity said"
"as she said"?
Unless it was indeed Twilight smiling and laughing?
"for all Twilight’s communication traced specifically"
"communication to be traced"?
...Hm. I think I'm getting chronology confusion again. Going back a little, I think that this bit:
"It took a while to even get the business started"
is the main source. Perhaps "It was taking a while"? That sounds to me more like it's still in progress at this point in the story, which... seems to be the case? The current version read to me as the business already being up and running, with maybe that paragraph and the next at most being further details on how. I might just be -- Well, I am confused, but I might in my confusion be mistaken about something, though.
Twilight and Rarity are jointly using "Libraria", it looks like?
I thought Rarity was Darjeeling up until the swearing. :)
...And looking at the time and how much of the chapter I've gotten read, I think I may need to try a bit harder to reign in any urges to comment. Sorry. :)
...Oh. And they're going to read Wikipedia. Twilight is going to read Wikipedia. Oh dear. :D
"an “in.”So"
"an “in.” So"?
"not unlike friendship bennies"
Eh? Using a dictionary, I think I know what she means... but I'm not sure, and the wording seems odd.
And huh; I was expecting Twilight to get distracted reading wiki page after wiki page. And possibly, in several places, horrified. I suppose she's just really, really focused at the moment.
"said angrily having been cornered in"
"angrily, having"?
"paused and looked back worried"
"worriedly"?
"arcitecture"
"architecture"?
"with her friend and everything"
"with her friend, and everything"?
"Rarity said splashing at"
"said, splashing"?
"find yourself overwhelmed"
"yourselves"?
...Also... is this Starlight Glimmer running an Equality Retreat?
...Yeeeeep, looks like. Oh dear. Again. :D
...Uh... Twilight? You okay there? Just, uh... if you feel the urge to start rearing back and laughing, possibly while saying that you'll show those fools, maaaaaybe take a short break to write to Celestia about your... great success? Yeah...
re Pinkie and Applejack:
Simultaneous Yay and Aww. :D
"screaming, panic and attacking hydras"
"panic, and"?
...And now I'm wondering whether this cloudwalking rhyme is an example of earth pony magic, or whether it's a (successful) attempt by Twilight to control Pinkiness for Pinkie's benefit. ...I'm guessing... probably earth pony magic? Or... some special magic, unique or from another tribe, that Pinkie has.
"Pinkie pulled a megaphone out of her party space"
But things like that do rather make it hard to tell. :D
"pink and yellow one flew up to"
"one, flew"?
"under there and I don’t want"
"there, and"?
"Dash asked tensing up"
"asked, tensing"?
I wonder just how many of the episodes Rainbow's gone back and rewatched? Probably... all of them. But just how many times? Given how long she's been at this...
Ah. So all but one. Aww. :)
...Hm. I wonder why Rainbow's testy now, though?
"as Pinkie Pie continues"
"continued"?
Ah, so earth pony magic and Pinkieness.
"WHAT DID YOU DOOO"
Should there be a punctuation mark after that?
"One season 2 episode later"
The Mysterious Mare Do Well, I'm guessing?
"at her wide eyed friend’s astonishment"
"wide-eyed"?
"Pinkie said hopping excitedly"
"said, hopping"?
Oh, hm. And the chapter seems inconsistent on "school house" vs. "schoolhouse". Nearly even, looks like, and I'm not sure which way you'd like it corrected. Still, easy to search for both of those.
"I think things are going well.
"
Well, you know, the only problem we've seen a resolution to is Pinkie's hunt for Rainbow, which ended with Pinkie getting sucked into the same thing as Rainbow, but they do seem happy about it! :D
...How do I multiquote with this new system? Used to be shift clicking, but that doesn't seem to work anymore...
Oh, there's a tooltip: Control clicking. Don't know why they made the change, but okay. Anyway.
...Except that doesn't work on my system. Arrrrrrrghbother.
Right, post made on new version thread. Guess for now I'll just have to deal with it, scrolling up and down and hopefully not losing my place too much.
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@Blankscape:
Also, (spoilering just in case) Twilight's tree library wasn't destroyed and replaced in this verse; the magic repaired it instead of growing a crystal castle. Though I guess that could count as the second? It does indeed not follow the show all the way up to the current season.
@ferret:
:)
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"I wonder what will Double Diamond is in Ponyville?"
I don't think he's in Ponyville; my interpretation is that Fluttershy and Rarity are on a trip.
8222988
It's quite possible! The show only ever showed what might have been a projector screen down there, if Diamond hadn't taped her picture to it. That's usually what those roll-down screens are for, at any rate. At any rate, Twilight's projector is the one Rainbow Dash can easily nick.
It's a pun on "pennies."
Applejack has a real knack for reading ponies.
I know! How could Pinkie Pie possibly have known to put a megaphone in her party space? It's uncanny!
Twilight Sparkle is one of those ponies who has to struggle to get distracted, and her mind always keeps going back to the same thing until her problem is resolved. Anyway, Rarity was still there to keep her in check, at the time.
She was too busy panicking to use proper punctuation.
First, you click the insert quote button, and then when nothing works, you curse Nighty for making everything on this site so bloody overcomplicated and obstructionary. Then you curse the blackest evil that is Google for giving Nighty the ideas and tools with which to do horrible javascript things to all our computers, and stealing his soul with sweet words about ruling the world together in the web 2.0. Then you curse our terrible universe for deluding itself into thinking it ever existed. Then you click on the comment number of the comment you wish to refer to, which is a permalink that ends with the number you need to type in the comment box, manually prefixing that number with >> to magic it into a reference.
I've always hated the Alternate Universe tag, because it's just an excuse to persecute and punish people for deviating from the norm. If I made the mane 6 all live in a giant continually exploding muffin, it would be just as much an alternate universe from "canon" as the person who wrote a story about how Snips cut somepony's hair. Neither of those things happened in the show, but people who write the latter like to lord over others, like their conformity makes their stories better than everyone else. It's totally arbitrary where to draw the line at "alternate universe," and too often that line is "whatever I don't want people to like." The tag's only function is to segregate stories according to a show bible that even DHX themselves claim not to exist, so it's either completely useless and ignored, or harmful and hiding (or shielding) people from stories they'd want to read.
IMO it should be put on stories that have an alternate universe, not stories that are un-canony enough from a canon-ish thing by some arbitrary, inconsistent criteria, to deserve to be sorted into slot A instead of slot B.
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"It's quite possible! The show only ever showed what might have been a projector screen down there, if Diamond hadn't taped her picture to it. That's usually what those roll-down screens are for, at any rate. At any rate, Twilight's projector is the one Rainbow Dash can easily nick."
Aye.
Though what Rainbow Dash can easily nick seems to be rather more than what most people could. :)
"It's a pun on "pennies.""
Ah. Hm. So it's a... unit of the tabs? Or a smaller denomination of the bit?
"Applejack has a real knack for reading ponies."
:)
re the letter:
:D
"I know! How could Pinkie Pie possibly have known to put a megaphone in her party space? It's uncanny!"
Also :D
"Twilight Sparkle is one of those ponies who has to struggle to get distracted, and her mind always keeps going back to the same thing until her problem is resolved. Anyway, Rarity was still there to keep her in check, at the time."
Ah, thanks.
"She was too busy panicking to use proper punctuation."
Ah. :)
"First, you click the insert quote button, and then when nothing works, you curse Nighty for making everything on this site so bloody overcomplicated and obstructionary. Then you curse the blackest evil that is Google for giving Nighty the ideas and tools with which to do horrible javascript things to all our computers, and stealing his soul with sweet words about ruling the world together in the web 2.0. Then you curse our terrible universe for deluding itself into thinking it ever existed. Then you click on the comment number of the comment you wish to refer to, which is a permalink that ends with the number you need to type in the comment box, manually prefixing that number with >> to magic it into a reference."
Ooh, thanks.
...Though I think I might be able to streamline your system a bit. :)
I'll test it with this reply.
"It's totally arbitrary where to draw the line at "alternate universe,""
Perhaps not totally completely arbitrary, since some things have less needed deviation than others from events in show canon, but in essence, agreed.
"and too often that line is "whatever I don't want people to like.""
"or harmful and hiding (or shielding) people from stories they'd want to read."
...Huh. Really?
Though I suppose I'm more in the ignoring category, and not an author who's had to decide whether it applies or not (or face criticism from people who think I made the wrong choice), so perhaps not that surprising I didn't notice.
Sorry you've got to deal with it, though. I like your idea of using for stories that have an alternate universe... but that's also making me think of the XKCD comic about proliferating standards.
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It works! And is actually a bit more convenient for me than the old system, too! Thanks. :)
edit:
Oh, another thing I noticed today? Follow/following buttons no longer change color with status (I accidentally unfollowed someone earlier because of it, though fortunately I noticed immediately.). Why?
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And do you think that the science team will appreciate that Princess Twilight Sparkle, who originally shutdown their research, now decided to hijack their project for her own end, have all of them be at her beckoning call for the flimsy excuse of helping a human originated from that world to go back home?
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Well, if it weren't for the author saying there is a literal portal to another dimension there, I'd say that the AU tag is unnecessary. Starting and keeping a story largely contained within past canon usually doesn't constitute changes significant enough to be called 'alternate'.
8223166
I'd agree, but the Fimfiction administrators have decided to define it as "significantly diverged from canon" so all I can really do is bitch about it, and wish there was a tag to separate the "humans from an alternate universe" stories from the "everyone's a human because I like boobs" stories and the "Equestria Girls, but nobody even mentions ponyland" stories.
8223152
She's bringing on herself a passive/aggressive war of monumental scale.
8223062
It's an implication that Equestria's system is a little bit more complex than a simple gift economy.
Well, there's a spectrum of how different a fanfic is from the show, but where to draw the line at which point it is not considered AU is arbitrary.
8223166
Ah.
8223623
"It's an implication that Equestria's system is a little bit more complex than a simple gift economy."
Ah, thanks.
"Well, there's a spectrum of how different a fanfic is from the show, but where to draw the line at which point it is not considered AU is arbitrary."
I don't think it's wholly arbitrary, though. If people were polled on where their lines are and then those lines were plotted on the spectrum, I'd expect the trend of the result to be a curve, not an even distribution. Granted, that would still only indicate correlation, but it seems probable that most people are basing their line locations on some degree of difference from show canon.
...Though... is the issue that they'd still have the freedom to put their lines places that don't make sense from their perspectives? Hm. But even without hard determinism (which I'd agree isn't there), there'd still, in this model, be a probability distribution, wouldn't there, and therefore some degree of causation?
(Actually, that might be a useful way to do the polling: Have a series of increasingly divergent scenarios and as the poll-taker to indicate where they'd start thinking of the scenario as AU. The poll should consist of multiple such sets of scenarios, too. Though... if the spectrums are to be put together, there'd still need to be a way to map the degrees of divergence of the sets onto each other...)
...I'm probably overthinking this, aren't I?
I think I found this story on the sidebar of another story as "similar" and picked it up on a whim, but I've been pleasantly surprised with the headcannon and the concept. A fic this well written deserves many more upvotes!
8225619
Thanks! I dunno about the lack of upvotes. It's probably the slow start to the fic, or the psych-out of starring the M6 even though there's a new pony in town. Or maybe it's the author's cruel, spiteful, mean-spirited abuse of Twilight when... oh, never mind that chapter hasn't been published yet.
8223905
Let me know what the thesis committee thinks of your dissertation.
8226191
"Thanks! I dunno about the lack of upvotes. It's probably the slow start to the fic, or the psych-out of starring the M6 even though there's a new pony in town. Or maybe it's the author's cruel, spiteful, mean-spirited abuse of Twilight when... oh, never mind that chapter hasn't been published yet."
It might also be in large part a lack of exposure; people can't vote on your story at all, after all, if they don't know it exists.
"Let me know what the thesis committee thinks of your dissertation.
"
:)
8226324
Every story here has that problem. Other stories get a thousand upvotes, just because people like them. It's a little sad that the one thing I'm better at than anything else would be worth so little to most people, but there really isn't any other explanation. I've put this story in the groups it fits in, so I don't know what else I could do to reach people who would be so keen on reading it.
8226342
I'm afraid that I don't know either; sorry.
I quite like your writing, for what it's worth; thank you for doing it, even if you don't have crowds beating down your door for it. :)
8226508
I'm sure I'll post some shamelessly pandering fic that gets a bunch of hundreds in upvotes one of these days, and it'll probably be really good for what it is! But I'm not in dire financial straits, or any other need to be really popular, so for now I can write what I like.
8226770
That's good. :)
I only just made the connection while I was taking a break before this chapter, and the thing Pinkie says near the end there makes me pretty confident... Rainbow Dash was raised at some pony equivalent of Kinderheim 511? Jives with her reaction to being called "monster", too. (Cheeky!)
I actually really appreciate the more overt expression of Pegasus and Earth Pony magic, especially with how it seems to connect with internal will and animism rather than something more structured and scientific. It's a neat flourish.
Well. Fuck.