It had been months after the discovery of an ancient bunker that was stumbled upon by the CMC. They were naturally grounded for going off course when they were only supposed to be visiting Zecora. Twilight and her friends investigated the bunker. The huge metal door wouldn’t budge, so she slowly welded it open.
The bunker was just a small room for such a large door. Inside it was mostly empty except for a electrical light source of some kind above and some weird rectangular black thing on the wall.
Twilight had no clue what it was at the time, though looking back she could’ve compared to what they have at the movie theater. Now however, she knew it as a touch computer screen, and the words that appeared on it luckily enough were Equestrian, or English if you went by the creators word for it. She quickly learned that what the CMC found was merely a relay-hub of sorts that told the locations of several other Bunkers that had much more tangible things within. Well, that wasn’t entirely true. It also contained a vast amount of music, all categorized. The screen only provided her with text of the words in a song. A nice feature considering some songs were in different languages, or the singers were simply hard to understand. She spent some time with her friends browsing through the vast amount of songs and music, while they waited for the ponies from Canterlot University to show up, which lasted a couple days. It was an interesting experience.
At any rate, a couple weeks ago they found another bunker full of those screens but far smaller. They were called ipads. They all seemed to work perfectly according to several letters she got detailing them. Pinkie Pie oddly enough seemed very interested in reading those academic letters as well. She seemed keenly interested in the thing the researchers referred to as the internet. Twilight could understand why though. She wouldn’t mind talking to an image of her mom and dad who live in Canterlot from a screen that also recorded her image to them, or having all the knowledge acquired in the world available to her at the tap of a screen, but Pinkie seemed a lot more excited about it, which was why she had them mail two ipads over with any attachments they have.
_______________________________________________________________________________________
Rainbow was never really too big a fan of music. It was usually too froo froo. That changed after she listened to some music from that bunker Scootaloo and her friends found. Some of it was out right disturbing but some of it was magical to her. One such song she had to share with her surrogate sister, which wasn’t too hard after the ponies from Canterlot University left to find the other bunkers. Scootaloo agreed that the song was great. It just oozed cool and awesome to them which are things they were all about.
Pinkie invited them and several other ponies (the whole town) over to the theatre for a viewing of “Finding Nemo.” So that’s where they went, since they had nothing else to do.
Pinkie hopped in front of the huge screen, “Mares and Gentlecolts, I’ve recently come in possession of an ipad. A relic of an extinct race called humans, who apparently all died in a tragic nuclear war millions of years ago. That being said, here’s a movie they made about… well that would be spoilers now wouldn’t it?”
Sometime after they watched and totally didn’t cry at all, Pinkie was waving everypony out. Rainbow held Scootaloo back and waited till everypony else was gone, “Pinkie I heard from Twilight that, that umm ipad thing also had music on it right?”
“Yeppers!” Pinkie said chipperly, ”In fact, it’s what I used to project the movie you just watched!”
“Oh, I wonder if it has that song!” Scootaloo said excitedly wings buzzing.
“With the internet, it has everything!” Pinkie said excitedly then brought a hoof to her chin, “Well unless the song you’re talking about is a pony song, I’ve only recently been recording some videos for my songs and uploading them,” Rainbow and Scootaloo looked at her oddly, “and there’s so many different songs I need to get to,” she said with a smile. “Oh I know, one moment!” Pinkie disappeared and reappeared with her ipad in hoof, “Okay what song are you talking about? Are you talking about the one I think you’re talking about? Or did you two discovery another cool song?”
Rainbow smiled, “nah, I couldn’t find one quite as cool as it.”
“I’m still upset you didn’t let me help you find more cool songs,” Scootaloo complained.
“Trust me squirt, some of those songs are just out right wrong even for me,” Rainbow explained.
“Anyways,” Pinkie intervened, “let's see if the internet has a music video of that song?” Pinkie said tapping the screen with her hoof.
“A video? For a song,” Rainbows eyes lit up in excitement. She could only wonder what kind of awesome video this awesome song could have.
After what seemed like forever Pinkie finally managed to find a video made by the creator of the song Rainbow loved so much. They watched it and at several points she almost felt like covering Scootaloo's eyes, but didn’t because the music was just that cool. The video was on the verge of being something completely unwholesome; yet, at the same time it wasn’t. It was just really really weird but in a cool way. She loved it and Scootaloo did to. She noticed that the name of the song was in under a side picture but the picture looked a little different than the video she just watched, “What’s this?” she asked accidently bumping her hoof against the screen. It began playing a different video but with the same cool music.
Pinkie stopped it by bumping the video, “Oh, that’s a remake somehuman made of the original, it’s why it took me so long to find that video.” Scootaloo’s face lit up with the joy of a great idea.
“Pinkie did you say earlier that you were making your own music videos?” Scootaloo asked.
“I am!” she proclaimed happily.
“Do you think you could help me and Rainbow remake that music video?” Scootaloo asked excitedly.
Pinkie breathed in deeply, “Of course I could. That sounds like tons of fun!” She exclaimed.
“Oh my gosh, that’s brilliant Scootaloo, let's do it!” Rainbow exclaimed.
One Week Later
“Come in, come in,” Pinkie gestured as Rainbow and Scootaloo walked in, “Okay, so this is what I got for the light effect… I know it looks weird but I think that was the whole point of the original video right? Hehehehee,” she laughed nervously as she loosened an invisible tie and her eyes scanned from left to right a couple times.
Rainbow briefly looked at the garments they were going to be wearing before looking at the rest of the stage. It impressively resembled the original and she was awed by it, “Wow, Pinkie you did a good job recreating that room, or stage, or whatever.”
“Aww, thanks, I even got the beginning of the video already done since I didn’t need the stars of the show,” she said waving them over to her ipad. She began the video and they watched a pretty faithful recreation of the start of the video of their favorite song. The original panned and cut to various pictures of various things on a wall. Pinkies version had the same style but the pictures were of her, her friends, and her surrogate sister.
“That looks great Pinkie. I love it!” Rainbow said whole heartedly.
“Wow Pinkie, you made that look even better than the original,” Scootaloo exclaimed excitedly.
“Aww thanks you guys,” Pinkie said, “but let's get started with the rest of the video!” Pinkie hopped to where she left the garments and threw them to Rainbow and Scootaloo, “Okay, put those on and don’t think about it too much I had Rarity and Twilight make them for me… Soo we’re gonna be showing this music video made by us ponies to them ponies once it’s done, this is non-negotiable, also I'm gonna have to take yours back," she said gesturing to Scootaloo, "when we're done with it so Twilight can incinerate it." Scootaloo looked at her in confusion and shrugged.
“Forget that!” Rainbow exclaimed, “I want everypony to see this video of us ponies with cool music!”
“I’m gonna invite Princess Luna to watch our pony music video!” Scootaloo exclaimed happily as she put on her garment.
“So how do these things light up?” Rainbow asked as she put on her garment.
“Oh! One second,” Pinkie fished around and got two gems Twilight had given her, “All I have to do is give these a little squeeze and those will light up,” she said demonstrating, much to Rainbow’s excitement…
“Cool, so let's get this video started!” Rainbow exclaimed.
“Okay, Rainbow go sit in that chair,” she watched as Rainbow did so while preparing her ipad, “Okay, now you have to look serious. A little less constipated… and ACTION!” She played the music.
About Two Hours Later
They finally got done with the portion of the video that had the characters sitting down. It was mainly the facial expressions they wanted to get right the rest was pretty easy. Now they were at the portion where the characters were standing which was a problem since the characters in the original were bipedal, and they were ponies and different sizes. Scootaloo wasn’t tall enough to put a hoof around Rainbow's shoulder, so they were at a lose at what to do, “I know!” Pinkie exclaimed, “Rainbow paw the ground kind of and Scootaloo sway your body, I know it’s not like the original but there’s not much else we can do.”
“Ugh, Pinkie I don’t want to look lame,” Rainbow complained.
“You won’t look lame. Trust me please, I’ll Pinkie Promise if I have to!” Pinkie pleaded.
“Okay fine, I saw the great work you did with the opening. I’ll let you decide,” Rainbow conceded.
“Action!”
One Hour Later
“Do we really have to do that!?” Rainbow said in shock, with a slight blush.
“Wow!” Scootaloo exclaimed also with a blush, “how come that totally never came to mind when I thought about recreating this music video. I mean, it totally really never came to mind at all. We're like sister's. That'd just be weird. It totally never registered to me that we'd have to do that. Not once!" she over explained.
"I know exactly what you mean Scootaloo," Rainbow agreed honestly.
"I mean just look at them,” Scootaloo said gesturing to the video, “When does it stop?”
"You're right Scootaloo," Rainbow agreed, "we can't do that it's wrong on so many levels."
"Wait!" Scootaloo yelled, "we can't stop now, we got Pinkie to set all this up and we already got most of it done, and we-we have to continue if only for her!"
Pinkie laughed, “No you sillies, of course you don’t have to do that. It’s called acting, you just pretend you’re doing it. I’ll even make sure it's not directly in the screen that way it’ll just look like you’re doing it, when you’re really not doing it. Besides you are your characters when on the screen not yourselves,”
“Oh, that makes sense I guess,” Rainbow agreed.
“Let's do it Rainbow!” Scootaloo exclaimed happily, before blushing, “I mean, act like we’re doing it… yeah, that's totally what I meant.”
The Next Day
“Come on in, come on in,” Rainbow and Scootaloo greeted the ponies who decided to watch their pony music video, as they filed in the theatre room. She was really impressed with how many ponies Pinkie could get to come watch an almost two minute video. Eventually ponies came in more sparsely until the show was about to start, still no sign of Twilight.
“Hey Rainbow, Scootaloo,” Twilight said as she ran down the hall to them.
“Twilight you’re almost late, it’s a good thing I got Pinkie to reserve our seats in the back.” Rainbow said as they began to make their way into the packed theatre room.
“So what’s this pony music video about, I haven’t really looked at many music videos since I got my ipad,” Twilight said, “and Pinkie had me and Rarity make some rather questionable cloths for it…”
“Oh it’s just a remake of mine and Scootaloo's favorite songs music video, though I guess we had to cut it short because slavery and stuff,” Rainbow answered, as they passed by Applejack, Applebloom, Rarity, Sweetie, Belle, Fluttershy, and Princess Celestia in that order. Scootaloo sat next to Princess Luna. Twilight next to Princess Celestia and Rainbow in between Scootaloo and Twilight.
Twilight looked at Rainbow oddly. “Mares and Gentlecolts” Pinkie said getting her attention, “we have royalty in this theatre, so please put down your phones until after the Pony Music Video is over,” everypony in the crowd murmured in confusion, “Seriously. Show some respect!” Pinkie said menacingly while glaring at everypony, one pony shrugged, “And without further adO. I present to yoU. A pony music video with no context other than the fact it's starred by Rainbow Dash and ScootaloO!”
.
Silence filled the theatre room as the video ended.
Rainbow looked to Twilight whose eye was twitching, then to Celestia who had an unnerving smirk. To Rarity who looked at her in disgust and was holding Sweetie closely and Applejack who was giving her the stink eye and to Fluttershy who looked giddy? She turned to Scootaloo to see Princess Luna with an protective wing around her, glaring menacingly.
“N-now hold on, everypony. Now that I’ve watched it, just now with the rest of you. For the first time. I know what it looks like, P-Pinkie said, but it was just acting, and it-it was Scootaloo’s idea to begin with and Pinkie Pie was there the whole time!” Rainbow defended. In the background they could hear the muffled laughs of Pinkie from the projection room.
“Rainbow,” Twilight said really calmly for how she looked, “WHAT THE ACTUAL F-”
And of course, Pinkie gets no blame whatsoever... any chance we can get a sequel? Or epilogue?
8098728
Naaa, twas just for fun, hope you got a laugh out of it. Seemed like a funny idea to me at the time, and there's not many other videos I can use to the effect I was going for, which was comedy. I almost wanted to put Random as a tag just to say that it's not meant to be taken seriously at all, but it's technically not random in order of events.
I guess, I'll consider making an epilogue.
8098753
That being said, if there is a epilogue, Pinkie needs to be punished in some humorous fashion, if only for the catharsis factor.
Hm...this was...interesting.
The grammar's a little clunky, but I can tell what's going on for the most part so I really don't mind. Some of the dialogue comes across as a bit cringy, so I didn't really laugh much...at the first half of the story. Surprisingly, unlike The Attempted Assassinations of Twilight Sparkle, which is where I learned about this fic, the strongest part of the story was at the ending, when the entire audience had their own expected, and unexpected, reactions. Other than that, I feel like this has more potential to be a longer one-shot; it feels a little rushed at the beginning, with how they seemed to discover technology. And the way they figured out the names just seemed a little strange to me. I'm more used to pony pun names in stuff like this, so this is more so a personal nitpick as well as it is a little problem in the canon universe. Like, instead of Finding Nemo, perhaps you should've called it...Finding Neighmo, or something more pony related.
But you know what? This has a lot of potential. Why stop with a one-shot? Why not have this be an ongoing series where different ponies react to these new devices: Twilight could be attempting to ban these horrid creations after seeing what kind of scarring damage they could bring to society (mainly because she can't get that music video out of her head), Fluttershy could post videos on animal care on MooTube (YouTube), Applejack trying to help Granny Smith use the iPad only to have her utterly destroy it, the CMC could help this filly/colt with getting their cutiemark in hacking without reading into the consequences all while Scootaloo is trying to avoid the humiliation of the music video that's gonna haunt her for the reeeeeest of her life probably. Heck, you could probably include humans in the universe eventually; some who act normal, and others who are weird stalker-ish fans, or just a bunch of jerks, etc. There's just a lot you can do with this idea.
Over all, this was...alright. Not the best I've read, but most definitely not the worst. Keep writing, man. And don't worry; one day one of your fics will be featured. Just keep writing and improving your craft. That's all anyone can do.
You were being kinda rude over in comments to The Attempted Assassinations of Twilight Sparkle, slamming that story and asking people to read yours instead. I don't want to reward that rudeness. However, you did ask what you were doing wrong with this, and in the interests of helping a newer author improve, I'm willing to offer some quick reading impressions and a compare-and-contrast.
Assassinations starts with this paragraph:
It's arguable whether the cuddling session was intended as a joke or not, but even if we call that played-straight fanservice, it opens with recognizably humorous wording and imagery. Twilight is "thoroughly uncuddled" in front of the throne, and dealing with the comedically exaggerated "torture" of lemon-scented cologne.
Are those things funny? Maybe. That's not the point. The point is that that story recognizably tries, early and often. Not every joke lands, but even if those early jokes didn't work, it only took five (short) paragraphs to get to the line about court-mandated community service hours, which I couldn't help but grin at. The story did its job as a comedy: it told jokes.
Here? You open with an entire scene which is literally nothing but exposition. Five (long) paragraphs into your comedy, we have the backstory for why the Mane Six have iPads, but I'm waiting to see what joke you're setting up with it. Two thousand words later, I'm still waiting to see what joke you're setting up with it. And then your punchline is a video which you didn't even make. :\
Up until that punchline, I was going to argue that your primary mistake was that you tagged this [Comedy] instead of [Slice of Life], but now I suspect that the issue here is that you didn't have a firm idea when you were writing of what you wanted this story to be. You set up a dramatic backstory exploring ancient ruins (along with a helping of nuclear war and genocide), you've got a lot of light banter between friends as they assemble a video, and then you bank all of your comedy on a single joke at the end. You're essentially telling three separate stories. And while each of those stories could be cool looked at in isolation, you're trying to mash them together, and that makes it stumble tonally. Your serious and epic backstory of ponies-in-the-ruins-of-human-society dissipates when you grab a few pieces of technology from it and then proceed to ignore the setup. Your Slice of Life gets derailed by your punchline. Your punchline is diluted by needing to sit through over 2,000 non-funny words first.
So how do you fix that? For this story, a lot of scrapping and rewriting — reading through your story looking for opportunities to be funny, and then taking them where you can. For example:
This feels like such a missed opportunity. You just casually tell us that humans all died "in a tragic nuclear war". (Actually, Pinkie tells us that — and, come on, you can't seriously believe that Pinkie would deliver that quote like she was giving a lecture.) If you're going to have nuclear genocide in the backstory of your comedy, at least make it something to laugh about! Exaggerate it, or make it absurd, or have the ponies not understand what "war" is so you can crack some jokes based on their ignorance, or … there's a million ways to do it, but try for a laugh!
If I were writing this — you're under no obligation to do it this way; I'm just illustrating:
Again, this isn't about whether that particular joke is funny or not: that's gonna be up to personal taste. The point is that you take what could otherwise be a weirdly sobering background fact, and crack a joke with it.
Goal number one of your comedy story should be to make the reader laugh, so you should look at every single line as an opportunity to do that — not just one big punchline at the end.