This story is a sequel to The Consequences of Good Intentions
Sunset Shimmer has been here before and will be here again. It's almost becoming a habit.
The mind altering substances and carnal relations during an event in Equestria got out of hand, and now Celestia is extremely pissed off at her.
But this time it's Principal Celestia, and maybe that will make all the difference. Maybe this time she can come out on top. Sure, she's in the principal's office with her six closest friends and their inter-dimensional duplicates, sure this time there were five people, three humans and two ponies, left pregnant, sure all of these bombs are being dropped one week away from graduation, but this time is Sunset Shimmers moment to shine.
I really truly didn't expect my first story here to be something like this, but PrincessColumbia suggested posting it as a story and apparently it got Sporktacles stamp of hilarity as well.
The DSP universe doesn't have a canon as such, so this can't be considered canonical, but here's a list of current works and their chronological order:
Bad Decisions Make Better Stories
- Founding Story, takes place in Equestria, by Sporktacles
Sunset Shimmer's Very Respectable Class Reunion
- Second Main Story, takes place in Equestria, by Sporktacles
The Consequences of Good Intentions
- Side Story, takes place in the human world, by PrincessColumbia
This Story
- Picks up the line after the previous story leaves off, in the human world
Sunset Shimmer's Sexy Sapphic Sacrilege Surprise
- Most Recent Main Story, takes place in Equestria, by Sporktacles
Snerks, "Somehow I can't see this working, but wholly crap it was funny to watch. Two thumbs up... uhh, hooves.... something."
Oh dear. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear...
The first section is an elongated story description, not an introduction. Firthermore, it spoils everything to come. After that, you manage to work in a second recap of the previous stories, which is so much filler. Then you fill the rest of the story with telly, long-winded prose both in and out of the dialogue, sounding stilted and unnatural in both. And then...
Why exactly would that stop Celestia? Cutting off your opponent after she's had that much time to make her point while still failing to do so is a devastating move. This is emblematic of the artifically asymmetrical argument that takes up the majority of the story. Sunset wins not because of her own cleverness, but because you let her win.
This is a sequel to a series whose stock in trade is ludicrous, hilarious escalation spiralling into delightfully ridiculous punchlines. It does not follow suit in any of these regards. You definitely have a strong sense of what you want to see in a story; now you need the storytelling chops to make that happen without so nakedly shoving the advantage into one corner. That can only be done with practice and experience. In other words, keep writing! I'm sure you'll improve with time.
8369623
Yup. Probably an object lesson in why you shouldn't have a classicist adapt a comment into a story. It's no accident that the first nine lines of the Odyssey spoil the entire story in detail, it's a style. Then again, if I'd studied Shakespeare instead that would have taught me to open with the spoiling in-story summary, and Shakespeare is really damned recent.
As for where "adapt[ing] a comment" comes in, it made sense to have an introduction the comment since a comment doesn't have a separate story description. But the invocation doesn't work as a stand alone story description because it assumes that the reader is completely up to date on the entire DSP universe, which isn't necessarily the case. Obviously I could have dropped it, but that's where we go back to classicist.
Just be happy that I didn't have the fact that I'm also a mathematician on display. Could you imagine if I'd had Sunset deliver a formal proof?
That depends on the situation and your desired endgame. They're not in a debate, they're sure as Hell not flyting (though it would be epic if someone did write a Lokasenna-esque work where these characters were all sniping at each other around a giant feasting table), they're not trying to sway the masses to their cause. They are in a meeting called by Principal Celestia and Sunset's entire rambling takes the form of presenting a plan of action to that specific constituency of one.
She said at the outset that she'd tell why the plan should be adopted before she got to how it should be implemented, and indicated that the "Why" section would be unedited and thus rather longer. If she gets cut off when switching gears from "Why" to "How" that doesn't make her look bad. She wouldn't be assumed to be able to psychically know not only that someone would interrupt her but also exactly what would happen.
On the other hand, the person cutting her off (in this case Princess Celestia) knows very well that they are cutting her off. They're assumed to be responsible for the consequences of that action by default. The only way that this isn't making all of the time Sunset spent speaking a waste of time is if cutting her off takes the form of "Get to the point!" but that would be redundant since Sunset just said she was getting to the point.
If the Princess prevents Sunset from saying the "How" after letting her go on so long about the "Why" then she, not Sunset, is the one who made the time spent on the "Why" a waste of the Principal's time.
Plus, letting someone talk and talk they're about to start the conclusion and then stopping them before they can say it is generally considered a sort of assholic thing to do. If you're not going to let them finish, you don't wait until they get in spitting distance of the finish line and then stop them there as a surprise move, you stop them rather sooner. Maybe before they get out of the starting gates, because that saves time and doesn't let them think they'll be allowed to finish.
The original comment had a note to that effect, actually. I agree that several of the characters are out of character by virtue of staying silent. There are, after all, seventeen people crammed into the room. The thing is, look at how many author's notes there are. I didn't think it needed one more.
Though I will point out that it is possible to render people speechless by being sufficiently absurd. In truth, though, it would probably take a lot more than, "Princess Celestia is promoting drunken stoned orgies as part of a convoluted plot to make inter-dimensional babies!" to pull off silencing the various personalities in the room.
The point, recall, wasn't to convince the Principal to believe all of the stuff Sunset was spewing, if that were the case then Sunset could have stuck to the verifiable non-BS and done a reasonable job. Of course, if she had tried to point a calm, well reasoned, coherent argument then she wouldn't be able to count on the sheer absurdity of things shocking people into silence.
But, yeah, realistically she shouldn't be getting this much solo speaking time without having to put significantly more work into keeping everyone else too off balance to form a response.
8370057
Heyas! For what it's worth, I think the idea is pretty funny. Blame Princess Celestia for everything! I read the original comment, but didn't comment on it myself because I was on my phone and my phone sucks for doing stuff on FIMfiction, and I forgot when I got home later (been crazy busy this week catching up on classes).
I don't want to tell people how to write their stories, but if I might make a suggestion: take out the bit starting "Invocation" all the way to "Naturally, it didn't happen in Equestria.", because it's very different from the rest of the story and is a just recap of what you already covered in the Author note. It worked fine when your story was a comment, but doesn't work so well when published as a story. Start with "That the farm pony Applejack...", which (honestly) is where your story actually begins. Also so you don't spoil your own story. If you like, you can have another character call Sunset out on totally fast-talking her way out of trouble later on (I like Applejack for this role) and Sunset admitting that this is the first time she actually had the opportunity to do so.
You can keep the Author Note at the top. Normally I don't recommend having an A/N right at the beginning, but your story does kind of require reading PrincessColumbia's to first understand. You might want to spoiler-tag the summary of our stories, for those who want to go read them.
Of course, since this is your story, not mine, you don't have to listen to my silly suggestions.
Lastly, you really ought to have told me that you were publishing this - I don't mind if you don't, but if you did, I could have told all my readers about it! People who favorite the original story only get a notification if a sequel is written by the original author. If you told me, I could have made a blog post and your story could have had a bunch more views!
I don't want to jump the gun in case you don't want that extra attention, but if you like, I can still make that blog post and tell people about your story.
Cheers for your first story, and keep writing!
8372941
If you think it's worth promoting, then definitely promote it.
As for the invocation, yeah, my tastes are way old fashioned (say about 700 BCE) and I could tell it wasn't working but went ahead with it anyway. I'll get rid of it.
And thank you very much for saying something. May sound silly, but one of my greatest fears is writing to the void. Comments let me know that people are actually reading. Views tell me how many people came to the page, comments tell me that people actually read the thing and had some kind of reaction.
Another great addition to the DSP series. Totally needs another sequel!
Brilliant!!
Also wall oh text discussions. Insert God kills a cat girl, reality, anime characters moment here.
I love this. Literally blame her sister/mentor/God-Empress.
Okay, this was hilarious and awesome at the same time, and that ending was priceless!
Ya know, moral implications of wanting to bang your students very soon after they graduate and cease actually being your students aside, I can't really blame VP Luna for wanting to get with Sunset after witnessing that masterful act of fast-talking, maneuvering, and subterfuge!
Edit: also how long before there's another story/comment on THIS one and we continue further down this rabbit hole of madness and drunken sex?
Sunset at the start of this story.
i.imgur.com/itMcsy5.gif
OH GOD! Please, PLEASE keep this going!
8372941
I totally take all the blame. All of it! I'll hoard it until they find it in one of my abandoned lairs with a family of racoons living in it!
...that went off the rails a bit.
8376310
8373610
Well . . .
Somebody get on it already.
8381411
I would try but I already have too many projects on my slate.
If you can't dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit.
Congrats. That is literally the only time I have come across a "parlor scene" that both made perfect and almost no sense.
8381411
ugh, fine...
You know after reading this again for the....5th or 6th time, I still want to see a sequel to this. Particularly, I want to know what is going to happen between the baby daddies and baby mommas when the blessed day arrives for them to give birth to their precious bundles of crossbreeded joy. I also would like to know how many of these children will be born with naturally occurring actual pony ears and tails.
I'm almost tempted to add my own two cents to this delightful universe. But, I think I want to see what the rest of you who have added to this might come up with.
That was the most ridiculously convoluted thing I’ve ever read and you must be a genius to have come up with it.
8467166
A genius... Or a politician...
*squints suspiciously*
more please and i want it to be true that the celestia is to blame for every thing i love it
Pretty much how I felt about trying to slog through this mess. I'll be honest; this is how you kill a joke.
There's this joke, it's about a guy who wakes up after getting wasted the night before. He's making breakfast when the cops start pounding on his door. He asks the kids sitting at the table what the cops want...then remembers he doesn't HAVE kids.
The joke ENDS there. That's what makes it FUNNY. If you think too hard about it or keep on going with this guy trying not to go to prison for the rest of his life, it kind of stops being funny.
That's what this is. You've overtold the joke. You added stuff to the end of a joke which was told PERFECTLY, and your additions are just a rambling, unfunny mess with no sense of pacing, timing, or frankly humor.
I'm not even sure this should have a Comedy tag, honestly.
Sorry, this just didn't do whatever you meant it to.
8662520
This might just be personal preference but the story made me laugh quite a bit, thus I hope that the author ignores you
This needs more! I say Discord wants Sunset as his daughter.
Not as funny as what came before, but still worth the read.
Sunset Shimmer confirmed to be a great devil's advocate as well as one of the biggest bullshitters among Equestia and the human world.
Ok....wut?
I didn't think I'd ever see a follow-up to that story, as the potential to continue in the same tone seemed to me to be killed by the multiple pregnancies (which don't really need to just be a final punch line, but do make it hard to continue the theme of Sunset's bad decisions skating into mostly positive consequences). I am impressed.
More monologue than I'd like, but it's probably necessary. It's extremely hard to be succinct while also saying different but important things to multiple people, even more so while you have to constantly note the relative speciousness of everything you're saying. Sure, this is an argument Princess Celestia could readily win, but she's got very little real reason to beyond conversational reflex, and she's being reminded on one hoof her sister's happier these days at the same time as on another hoof that in this continuity there's a lot from Cadance that very much happened on her watch and the differences from canon make her treatment of Sunset rather worse. (Depending how much of the original Sporktacles we're going with about the history between Sunset and Celestia, there's potentially some nasty subtext buried in there Sunset might not even be aware of yet.) And presuming the PM job involves managing as much noble-wrangling as I'd presume, merely being able to improvise this monologue in itself represents an argument to take the option which keeps Sunset around and enabled.
Principal Celestia probably would be inclined to blame her counterpart a good deal even if the entire story was honestly yet fully laid out. And she's a Celestia. If she can get what she needs with adequate assurance she's not doing an actually bad thing... And while there really ought to be any number of conversational triggers right now for the other occupants of the room (as presented in the preceding story), they're mostly avoidable simply by staying away from any of the details of what actually happened that night - just what conclusions will be shared about the events. Princess Twilight really should be all over Sunset's speech, although there are also people there who'd reasonably be restraining her. And I could believe she's either too hung over to promptly respond and/or still dwelling on something really embarrassing or revealing which happened, thus distracted. Everyone else... has their own issues right now to be focused on. I can believe there's a lot of comedic potential in exploring just what those are, just like there are any number of outside events which could break the monologue up, but until the basic point is addressed about how we're going to make the multiple pregnancies in the room at least a plausibly long-term okay thing, going anywhere else feels like derailment.
Impressed. Really.
I love it! I want MORE of the DSP AU!
9687796
I'm honestly amazed by how many people like this.
When I wrote it, which wasn't as a story in itself but instead a comment fic, I expected the response, if any, to be far more along the lines of what MythrilMoth said here than anything positive. I definitely wasn't expecting people to encourage me to post it as its own story, and when I did I figured that the positivity bubble would burst and the response would be almost universally negative.
Instead it's still getting support.
I have actually thought about writing a new installment, but I don't think I can sustain it. The idea would be to have it set in the aftermath of the MLP movie (so you can see how old the idea is), take place in Equestria, and have Cadence respond to an existential threat to Equestria with a plan that amounted to:
9858192
Quite possibly because I never put a story into a group until last Monday, and I left it at just the one story in just the one group until today. I'm not sure whether or not I'm going to try to actually go through my stories and put them all in the relevant groups. This only went in today because I was putting my new story somewhere it belonged (Sunset Shimmer group, comedy folder) and this also happens to belong there.
This was amusing. Not quite as utterly mad as the other entries in the 'verse, but amusing nonetheless.