For years, the Flim Flam brothers have roamed the Heartlands, selling the proceeds of their artificing skills and searching for a patron who will provide the funding and protection that they need to bring their dreams to life. In the wake of her defeat of the mad alicorn Chroma, they have sought out Baroness Adagio Dazzle, hoping that the newest star on the Heartland's political scene will be willing to aid them. Baroness Dazzle is happy enough to give them a chance to prove their skills, but they will have more trials than simply those of engineering and salesponyship to overcome if they wish to win the grand prize...
A story of the Rainsverse. Rating for some fairly suggestive language.
Chapters (4)
Good work on this chapter. Just one thing, how does Starlight know what a bonobo is?
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Starlight is learned enough that she probably saw a reference to them back from when Equestria had contact with the nations on the continent of Not-Africa.
...I'll need to come up with a better name in the setting.
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Okay that make senses.
Huh.
*puts the story in tracking*
This variant of F&F looks even more honest than the show one in the cider episode.
I wonder where's the catch.
All I can say is - wow. This is a great start to the latest installment in this universe. Excellent mixture of humor, characterizations and future chapter set-up. I particularly liked the discussion about the Elements and the inner reflections on the parts of Adagio AND the Flim-Flams concerning the deal. I'll definitely be looking forward to more of this, but will also be quite willing to be patient.
... I take it this is a common issue? Like when she was extra busy one day and asked Aria if she could stir her honeypot?
Interesting look into the guild system in the Rainverse.
Is Sassy supposed to have a cockney accent in this or are you trying to use her show voice?
Holy mackerel. This is a great chapter. The exchanges and characterizations are superbly done and I have to admit that is one heck of a "no-win-scenario" (i.e. no matter what Suri chooses, there's going to be trouble).
At any rate, I will very certainly be looking forward to more, but will also understand that real world concerns must come first.
I love this universe.
I just wanted to make that apparent.
Nothing to say but good work.
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I have no idea what that accent is supposed to be or why Sassy is speaking in it. All I know is that when I write Sassy, her dialogue comes out in that accent, and there doesn’t seem to be much I can do about it.
The plot thickens.
I feel for Suri here, truly. I mean, we know that Adagio is not malicious, and she's not necessarily even looking to make a bunch of money very quickly. But we see here that the divide between them is real: Adagio is a politician, and Suri is a businessmare, and that means they look for different things.
Being business-minded myself, I understand all to well that the surest way to establish yourself in the market is to disrupt it with a new innovation. But you can't be too disruptive, or else the powers that be will bury you. In this case, the SSWW3K stands to completely upend an entire industry and put a lot of people out of work. Cheap clothing is of absolutely no use if no one has money to buy it.
But then, maybe it won't be able to translate all ideas into reality. And sorry to say, no machine is ever going to be able to reproduce that "made by hoof" look and feel perfectly (probably, I think).
Love this show. Can't wait for the next episode.
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Hmm... sadly, for Suri and the guild's sake, I don't think the "made by hoof" is going to be of much help here. While we today think of handmade stuff as finer, the ponies of Equestria has never seen anything else. To them, something made with that impeccable exactness a machine can provide is going to be even more alluring. No, I think Adagio is on the highway to royally screw herself over.
My advice: go on with the machine, and see if it works. If it does, convince Flim and Flam to keep their mouths shut about it. Then start it up on a slow scale, just make a few dresses a month or so and sell them for the same prices as a normal dress would cost. It will take longer, but that would be the only way I see to earn back the loan and not make an enemy of the guild.
Or one could go the more risky route and mass produce the machines and stockpile them. Then sell them all at the same time. If enough hit the market then I think there is a good chance the guild fractures completely (for good or bad). After all, I doubt the seamstress guild can really put an embargo on a machine. Or maybe they could, I don't really know how these things work.
Anyway, I think this is going to be a fun read. Keep up the good work.
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I looked backwards, and so far they've only talked about building one SSWW3K, so that may actually resolve some of the issue there if it's a one-of-a-kind device. It may simply not be practical to build more than one without using a machine to build them (as is the case with all mass produced machinery).
We really will just have to wait and see what happens. I do think, however, that we can look at what we see here and conclude that the known world has not yet developed economic theory.
The guilds do seem to be similar to labor unions, though, except control comes from an aristocracy.
Excellent work on this chapter.
Do you know if GreyGuardPony is planning on waiting for this story to finish before he starts writing another Rainsverse story?
Starlight is, of course, correct: That really shouldn’t be the way the world works, but it is. Adagio’s sense for realpolitik saves the day.
But that doesn’t matter. None of that matters.
Even if it were the case that Flim and Flam are criminals, Coco Pommel is a wealthy mare. She has guards, valets, and likely her own solicitors. Rangers and Sheriffs are not in short supply. Her barony will not manage itself, neither do the wheels of the Guild turn in their own. There is absolutely no reason for her to be pursuing them personally.
At least, not unless they’ve done nothing wrong, and she needs her title and presence to bully or threaten reprisal if her desires are not satisfied.
Where I come from, we call this sort of thing, “sketchy as hell,” and I ain’t talking about Skitchy.
I really like the depth this series has. It puts it well ahead of other stories in the "What if the Elements were diffrent genre."
I don't think you usually use both titles together like this.
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Huh. I’ve read a number of books where someone’s full title will be read out on formal occasions. Though you will notice that when I do it, it’s usually in the narrative, not something the characters are saying.
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You are right, it is distinctly sketchy. But, as mentioned above, the problem is the gap between knowing what Pommel just tried to pull and being able to prove it. Pommel could just say that she came down in person because she knew from her own experience how persuasive the brothers could be and wanted to make sure that they couldn’t talk their way out of getting arrested, and there’d be no good way to prove she was lying.
Excellent work on this chapter.