Inspired by PPG1998's Team VTP - Vehicles Turned Ponies, and WiseFireCracker's Gold and Brimstone: The Ultimate Team of Destiny. Go read them, I'll wait.
Blue Beetle never asked for this. He was a simple car, his owner took care of him and his mechanic made sure he was roadworthy, he was perfectly happy with driving away from monsters, ramming into monsters, and occasionally being driven by monsters. All until some demon decided to play "Will It Smash?" with him and some overly pompous Jaguar and found the answer to be an emphatic yes.
Fortunately for him the powers that be decided to give him a new body, which happens to be just as patchwork as his old body, and a new life in a realm so far disconnected from his old life that every new sensation, experience, or discovery is giving him whiplash.
Now if only he could figure out why everypony keeps on retching at the sight of him, that'd be great.
Conflicting Tags - Adventure (just a little bit)
Edited by -
Moongaze 14
Lord of Dorkness
Fionn
Hatter
Cover art by Tulip
Featured in the Non-Mature list on 5th June, 2017. What am I doing right, and can I teach others how to do it so I can make a bajillion dollars off of teaching people how to get to the featured box?
continue.
Interesting,
But then again, I find any author who dares to cross DF with MLP worth a watch.
Good luck, hope you can pull it off.
Well, as I said in the thread, this looks like an interesting start to this story. There's not enough of it yet for me to give it a thumbs up, but I'm still very much looking forward to future chapters, especially given the character tags.
Redheart won't take shit from anypony....
8212328
Best comment of all time.
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All that jumped out at me was āmachines that go pingā. To what does the Lost City of Hys refer? All I can come up with is the novel āHerā.
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āThe Sunken City of Ysā
Itās not remarkably common as Sunken City Legends/Myths go, but it has shown up a lot more than youād think. Itās just a shame that Atlantis seems to be the go to Sunken City these days.
8213306
In British terms, a ābatmanā is a valet (sort of). The accent may just be there to indicate that the term was taken from Prench.
8213306
In British terms a ābatmanā is somewhat like a valet. The accent may just be there to indicate the termās Prench etymology.
8213306
BĆ¢tpony, in this context is taken from batman, which come from the following definition.
The accent mark and lack of a hyphen are what defines it from bat-pony, or nocturne which is the more commonly used name for Lunar Pegasi.
8213350
Pretty much, although the accent marks also serves to separate it from bat-pony, or nocturne in this case. A little visual trick in this case.
Hm, Iām definitely liking where this is going. Celestia is absolutely adorable as she should be under the circumstances, and it seems like you are doing some interesting things with Blueblood which is always a good sign.
Now to wait for the former car to appear properly.
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Youāre either referring to the fact you did the cover-art for āBrimstone & Goldā, or you made fan-art already, and because my fragile ego cannot support the weight of that second option without crumbling, Iām going to assume itās the first.
In which case, I love that piece and it was one of the reference pics I sent to Tulip for the cover (alongside a couple of Buddy-Cop movie posters, and other assorted emotion/colour swatches). Although I do prefer āDream of Manyā, āArrow Flightā, and the āStriderā series (I get a very Tāau-ish vibe from the striders, despite the CSM allegiance, but me and my Space Commies) for just how smooth they look. Itās really damned nice.
Well every wizard needs a staff to work his magic.
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But the remains of Harryās staff are on Blue Beetleās forehead, ya know as the prosthetic horn...
Does this make him a literal dickhead?
Hilarious.š
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Perhaps. If not the snark will probably help.
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I am sorry to say that you are incorrect on both of those guesses, although I did toy with a variant on the first one when I was doing what little planning this story went through, what Iāve actually got planned, while convoluted, should make complete sense.
On the hodge-podging togather, up until this point Blue Beetle has been a car, specifically this janky, patchwork, four-cylinder, junk heap of a car that just refuses to fully die. I would be disregarding everything that car stands for if I made him whole and healed. It would be like entering the āGeneral Leeā from Dukes of Hazzard by not jumping through the windows.
So far Iāve been enjoying this, though I have been wondering if Blue Beetle will remember Harry.
Iād consider it something of a shame if he didnāt, because the two of them have been through a lot together.
The combo of Harryās magic, the monsters after him, and the lack of repair money was pretty hard on the beetle (Like, killing a normal vehicle ten times over hard), but the blue beetle kept kicking despite it. Harry probably wasnāt the best āparentā so to speak, but he cared for the beetle, didnāt mind itās looks, and appreciated itās reliability.
I imagine Blueblood's response to be along the lines of āI'm free! FREE!!!ā
Nice to see a growing number of stories is a secondary character but NOT the antagonist for the sake of having one. Iām curious to see the other ponies reactions.
Prince blueblood: Wait what!??!
Very nice
8222311
No, just no.
There is so much wrong in that comment that every time I've tried to figure out how to explain where you're wrong I've had to stop, look at the two-page essay I've written down, and delete it for being a rambling incoherant mess.
Your comment is wrong on nearly all its points, and you misspelled one of the main characters names. -25 points to whatever Hogwarts house you belong to Mister Mix-Up.
Out of curiosity, is 'snoot' supposed to be snout? Or did you intend to put snoot there intentionally? I ask because I met a person who called snouts snoots in an attempt to be all cutesy.
In either case, thank you for the chapter.
8222855
The snoot is a specific part of the nose that is especially prominent on wet nosed creatures like horses and dogs. It's real sensitive.
Thanks for the comment.
...Ok, I have to ask. Why are you going AU here? There's really no need to do so when you can just set this sometime in season 2 or the beginning of season 3 to avoid Discord's release through timeline shenanigans. The only difference in the setting will be that Larson hasn't bolted wings onto Twilight yet, and since that didn't have any real impact on anything else at all it's completely irrelevant. It would also eliminate the obvious question of why this happened so much later since I would have expected that residual storm to blow up very shortly after Discord was bottled back up rather than months later, and to be frank there are more than enough beings on the Dresden Files side with the ability to do this kind of thing so you don't need any Alacorn bullshit to power the jump. The Greek gods in particular come to mind for their power and mythological shenanigans, but the high end fae, Archangels, or even God himself are also easy options from what we have directly seen in the series, and you could also bring in other mythological figures like Loki since they definitely exist in that setting even if we haven't seen them directly. You could also have Discord himself have played a part in this because I can definitely see him making a suggestion to Uriel or someone to get them pointed at Twilight before he got bottled up again (probably between the two attempts to banish him with the Elements). This is also made easier by the fact that I wouldn't expect anyone to ever get the real story on exactly how the swap happened since there are tons of candidates out there (I would assume BB is at least vaguely aware of this) and there's presumably no way to ask them, so you could realistically leave this as an unanswered question after pointing this out to people who aren't familiar with the Dresden Files through BB's knowledge of the crazy shit Harry dealt with.
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Point the first) The main thing to mind here is that Wild Magic is not fast. It's this slow, grinding thing that doesn't happen often, but when it does it hits like a freight train that's jumped the rails and kept on picking up speed. The quickest comparison I can think of is LotR, and Treebeard and the Ents when he brings them all against Eisengard. Three years is quick for Wild Magic, and the Sisters were dealing with this crap for centuries after Discord's first rampage as Wild Magic found multiple points of release being made open to it while Discord's magic faded away.
Point the second) I know I put mind to it, even if none of the character except Celestia or Luna would explicitly know this, Obfuscating made a guess at it, but Harmony and Wild Magic do not get along. There was literally no Alicorn magic to help Blue Beetle make it across after his death, hell Alicorn magic almost killed him on arrival. The process goes like this..
Honestly, it's more like Nightmare Moon, and Discord brought Blue Beetle across with the consequences of their rampages near a strong font of Wild Magic (the Heart of the Everfree), a weakened Font of Harmony Magic (Tree of Harmony).
As for why this happened at this point in time and why Discord's not here. I wanted to write it at this point, I dislike trying to write Discord, and I AM THE AUTHOR, I CREATED THIS WORLD IN WHICH YOU TREAD, THE CHARACTER'S FATES ARE IN MY HANDS, YOU DARE QUESTION ME?
(I made the choice to write this at this point in time because I wanted to, and with the knowledge of how this happened can you honestly see Discord 'not' trying to puppeteer Blue Beetle into causing more Chaos because "My magic brought him here, he's not a real pony, I can play with him as I like")
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Oh god, there are so many logical problems with this reply.
Why? The obvious implication of wild magic is that it behaves more like what we see on Earth. That means the big effects are going to be coming within a few days and while they may very well spiral onward from there, they won't be subtle about it. If you want this to be something else you really need to both rename it and explain this delay in more detail, because as is it just feels like laziness on your part, not real world building.
Why would it pick him? Random action like this is for when you want to excuse a random dude (this is common in HIEs), not a major characters and especially not an oddity like a car. This is the kind of thing that implies a guiding hand specifically taking action based on who the characters in question are and what they have done (or possibly will do depending on the hand in question). Given that the character is BB and the mess this made of his body, my first thought is that this is some combination of a reward/apology to him and a prank on the ponies.
If it was going for her nearest genetic relation, that would either be her brother or parents (depending on how the genetic shuffle went), not Blueblood. You could get around this through physical proximity, but that would require putting him in Ponyville and might also seem contrived (although if this was at the start of season 2, you could play off Rarity and the Gala to do this). Of course, having an intelligent actor directing this completely blows this problem out of the water because I can absolutely see someone thinking it would be funny to make the two BB's related or deciding that having an obvious sibling would be good for them (and Discord could use this as an excuse to do something he thinks is funny too).
Look, I very much understand not wanting Discord involved. He has far too much power and is far too free with it to be good for story integrity. Reforming him was a terrible decision on the part of the writers and I honestly think that makes it nearly futile to make a story with any kind of serious cohesion after that point since practically every problem can be solved by throwing Discord at it.
That said, there is absolutely no reason to give Twilight the wings. It really just causes reader confusion with the timeline, and they really didn't do anything of substance to her character or the way the world interacts with her anyways so it makes far more sense to just set the story earlier and avoid the problems entirely. Just write the story like you would have in season 2/3 and everything will work perfectly.
8228474
Look it's clear we're going to argue back and forth on this 'cause I didn't write it the way you would have, and you have plenty of good idea, compared to mine for taking this story fully seriously, at the same time this is a silly story about a car being turned into a prince pony and the ramifications this has on the nobility, how this impacts my idea of Equestria, and silly hijinxs.
I am you? No. Do I have to write the way you would? No. I am going to go forward with this advice? Yes. Am I going to go backwards and bend the story the way you want me to? No.
Random action is RANDOM. It can just as likely take an implausible car connected to a Main Character Wizard, as any particular random schmuck, it just so happens there are a lot more results for less than 20 on a twenty sided dice, meaning the odds of taking a random schumck are higher, but if you were aiming for a particular random schmuck you're just as shit outta luck.
On the matter of Nearest Genetic relation, physical distance does play into it, as does part of what that Dark Magic was originally for, and I'm keeping some cards close to my chest.
On the matter of Twilight's wings, do they add anything, beyond a specific point in time? No. Does it take anything away from the story? No. If you look at the character tags Twilight ain't there, and I originally intended for her to be gone in chapter 2, before I realised that having Celestia sit down and just explain what she thought happened for about half of the exposition length of what we've got with the conversation set-up would be even more boring. She's gonna be gone beyond where this touches upon canon episodes.
May this be an end to it? Please.
8229531
Ok, I'll drop it, but I do want to say two things first.
First, just because a story is silly doesn't mean it should throw out logic. Readers will be pulled out of a story by things that don't add up, and that hurts any story regardless of the subject matter or genre so you should only take actions that will cause disconnects where they are absolutely needed to support a story. Breaking this rule is how you get tropes like the idiot ball, X as the plot demands, and other cases of authorial fiat, so you should make sure to invest the time and effort needed to avoid it wherever possible regardless of what you are writing. In the case of this story, adding the wings creates this kind of break since it messes with people's assumptions about the timeline.
Second, while I'm definitely not dropping the story over this, it does hurt my investment and interest in the story since it represents a failure on your part to think your decisions through and do everything in your power to write the best story possible. That obviously implies that you are much more likely to make serious mistakes in the future since it's reasonable to assume that you will fail to think things through again. To be blunt and crystal clear, that's not something I can ignore, and the next time I don't have enough time to read everything that updates it will be a consideration when I am trying to decide what to read and what I'll have to delay, and those delays can and do lead to dropping stories I didn't really intend to drop but just sort of lost track of due to endless delays.
When I first started reading this, I thought the main character was the love bug.
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Let's be fair, there is a running gag where people spray paint 53 onto Blue Beetle's hood, and Harry scrubs it off, but I don't think I've ever consciously seen a Love Bug or Superbug film.
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8277212
They've aged quite a bit, but to my recollection they're still decent sports slash family movies with that one twist making them more interesting.
Just, you know, there's not nearly as much impact left in that central premise as there once were.
Snark aside, hey're interesting little time-capsules, though. I'd honestly recommend them on a rainy day, because they simply don't make movies with those sort of stakes and pace anymore.
8375612
Monocles? As in plural?
Why would you wear more than one monocle? At that point you're just making a spectacle of yourself.
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funnypictures.s3.amazonaws.com/590ce743-b92d-42a1-84c1-4472f5d12a6f.jpg
Upon re-reading, I no longer know who the Young Monster was. Molly?
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Molly.
well i do hop luna figures out how to fix nightmares curse
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Taken from a discussion I had with one of my pre-readers when we were trying to clarify that scene.