Side Effects
Starlight leaned against Trixie on the couch as Twilight finished recounting their story. Sunset had fallen asleep under Twilight’s wing. It had been a long day.
After a long pause, Starlight announced, “Everything you do is weird.”
“Considering what I’ve caught you doing…” Twilight raised an eyebrow. “You really want me to respond to that?”
Instantly, Starlight blushed. “Um… no. Sorry.”
Twilight rolled her eyes. Another scroll appeared above their heads. Twilight caught it in her magic and unrolled it.
“Huh. Brown and Clear’s wedding invite.” Twilight sighed and put it in the corner with the four dozen other wedding invitations.
“What’s the situation now?” Starlight asked.
“Well, the flower industry is booming,” Twilight said. “Candy sales are through the roof. And weddings are up by a factor of twenty.”
“Wait. So this… Narrative Cascade… it’s permanent?”
Twilight glared at the annoyingly adorable unicorn under her wing. “Only brown narrativium can force a pony to do things out of character. Pink narrativium just removes romantic inhibitions. The feelings were all real. Just suppressed.”
“Oddly specific,” Starlight commented.
“No kidding,” Twilight muttered.
“For somepony with that many shipfics,” Sunset mumbled. “You’re pretty judgmental.”
“Hey! You’re supposed to be asleep!”
“I like her.” Trixie giggled.
Starlight joined in. So did Sunset, who cracked an eye open to give Twilight an annoyingly adorable smirk.
Twilight sighed.
“What about Minuette and Moondancer?” Starlight asked.
“Dunno,” Sunset said as she stretched, then pulled Twilight’s wing over her like a blanket. Twilight would have been mad if Sunset weren’t doing it specifically because she knew Twilight found it annoyingly adorable.
“Nopony’s heard from them since the end of the Cascade,” Twilight said.
“That’s not strictly true,” Sunset said. “After all, we did go by Moondancer’s house and we heard some rather loud—”
“Nopony’s heard anything confirmed to be from them since the end of the Cascade!” Twilight shouted.
Starlight and Trixie snickered.
“Ugh, you three will be the death of me.”
“At least you’ll enjoy it!” Sunset said, her smirk never fading.
“Well, we should let you get some rest,” Starlight said as she pulled Trixie up and pushed her toward the door. “You’ve had quite the week. I promised Trixie a moonlit walk along the lake tonight after our picnic date.”
Sunset’s eyes popped open. “Wait a minute… since when have you two been dating?”
Starlight and Trixie both stopped. “What are you talking about?”
“You weren’t dating when we left for Canterlot,” Twilight said. “And the Cascade never made it outside the city.”
Starlight shared a confused look with Trixie.
“Trixie has been gracing Starlight with the pleasure of her romantic company for almost eight months!” Trixie proclaimed. “For the Princess of Friendship, you should pay closer attention to your friends.”
Starlight nodded and the two left, closing the door behind them.
A long silence stretched through the room.
“You think it’s still…”
“No.”
“Okay, just asking.” Sunset snuggled against her like some giant amber tabby. “So, the real question… assuming the Cascade hadn’t happened… would you have said yes?”
“I guess we’ll never know.”
Sunset glared at her. “No, really. I want to know.”
“But… that’s what you’re supposed to say.”
“Only for terrible shipfics.” Sunset smirked. “Like the ones in your attic.”
“I’m going to burn my attic.”
“Awww…” Sunset pouted. “But I really wanted to try some of the stuff from issue eighty-four and seventy-six!”
Twilight hesitated. “What about… issue twenty-nine?”
“Only if you promise not to burn them!” Sunset demanded. “And answer my question.”
“Eh. Fine. Worth it. I was going to say yes. There, happy?”
“Very!”
“Good!”
Silence.
“Can we try twenty-nine now?”
“Oh Celestia, yes.”
Twilight Sparkle's Secret Shipfic Folder provided by Horrible People Games.
I do hope you've all enjoyed this wild and crazy romp through Canterlot in this bizarre fusion of Half-Life 1, Back to the Future, Twilight Sparkle's Secret Shipfic Folder, Discworld and my own incurable shipping disorder. This also marks my first attempt at writing what I call "absurdist," a style similar to Terry Pratchett's Discworld series, who I strongly recommend to any reader of comedy, author of comedy, human, alien or extradimensional chaos god.
My one regret is I didn't have an extra ten thousand words. I could have gone on and on like this for who knows how long. I ended up only twenty words under the hard word count cutoff. It got to the point where I had a spreadsheet to help me track it properly. However, I learned a lot about word efficiency through this exercise.
Special thanks to two guest pre-readers: Ladrian and Heartshine! Ladrian's commentary is so damn perfect, especially for a story like this. Sadly, he had some brilliant ideas that I couldn't add because it would put me over the word count! I'm also happy to say that the ending of this story is pretty much exactly what he would have written anyway! Heartshine added even more to it with her wisecracks and insights, plus just being there for encouragement and a bit of kindness.
As usual, thanks to both Cursori and Little Tinker for their tireless efforts at helping me make my stories the best they can be.
Narrativium was outright stolen from the Discworld universe by Terry Pratchett, though Pink Narrativium was my idea. In addition, the lines by the Doctors are also the lines heard in the testing chamber before the Resonance Cascade at the beginning of Half-Life 1!
Don't worry about Doctor Freepony. After all, the right pony in the wrong place can make all the difference in the world. I'm sure some mysterious, story-hopping agent of unknown forces made sure he was tucked somewhere safe and secure. 
Great plot! It's almost time to hit publish! I should get to that!
Until next time folks, have fun!
-Novel
If you come across any errors, please let me know by PM!
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This looks like its going to be fun.
I am so screwed.
8702355
Wow, I think that's the strongest reaction I've ever gotten from you! It's crossed my mind! Then again, I might just come back to the idea in a totally new way where I can just go totally wild!
OK. I know Half-Life and Back to the Future, and have a familiarity of Pratchett and the Secret Shipfic Folder, and I still want to go, what the hell did I just read?
It was a fun ride though. Have another thumb up to add to your collection.
This was really funny and great.
The only sad thing is that there was no Rarijack shipping!!!
8702525
What happens when they're all put together... and the characters know about it.
8702552
I'm delighted you enjoyed it! But we only got to see Pinkie and Twi from the Mane 6! Who knows who might have been in Canterlot when things went down...
8702624
Still it would have been funny to see Applejack and Rarity make out! But I do love Sunlight a lot so you get a pass red!!!
This was silly. You're silly.
Thank you.
Lol. You’re cutting it real close to that hard cap of 12k words. Looking forward to reading this, though. Good luck in the contest!
This was a delightfully silly adventure poking fun at so many tropes and romance in general. I enjoyed every chapter, and your humor was generally spot on.
That being said, why did you post every chapter on the 22? You would have gotten a lot more people to view it if you'd posted it sequentially, once every day or couple of days. I understand wanting to upload it quickly, but with the way the site works the story will eventually fall out of recent stories/updates and people won't see it, despite the quality.
8702960
You're silly for reading it! You're welcome!
8703007
Seriously. When you're done reading, go through the author's note. I had a REALLY had time trimming this down!
8703010
Thank you! Honestly, I could have gone on for another few thousand words. DAMN THAT WORD COUNT LIMIT!
As for the 22nd, it actually all went live today, I simply hit publish on each chapter on the 22nd so I could track my FimFiction word count (it counts a little differently than Scrivener or Google Docs). As for publishing all in one go or not, the story was finished the evening on January 29 and was due on February 2nd. I've had mixed results on how effective the multi-day posting is for reader counts. My most popular story to date was three chapters released all in one go, while ones that have gone out over the course of days didn't do nearly as well.
It's always a gamble and with each new story, I usually try a slightly different method. In this case, I really just wanted it done and out!
8703031
I suppose there is a point to that.
One of my most popular stories, "A friendly Letter from Chrysalis", was strangely the least effort story I've written for this site and among the shorter ones I've written, yet it soared in popularity compared to my others.
It's odd, really. I guess I don't understand how this site works all that well.
8703053
Trust me. I don't think anyone really understands how it works.
Heh. This was good— No! Amazing! I was chuckling for most of the ride. It has both great use of meta humor and fantastic timing for the most part.
8703181
Thank you kindly! It was a blast to write and I definitely want to try this style of writing again sometime soon!
Brown narrativium is for OOC behavior... heh, I get it. You know, this may be the first time I've come across a comedy where the feces joke was the most subtle humor present. Remarkable.
Funny aside, and it was, I'm not sure I can handle shipping of this magnitude. Standard romance, sure, no problem. Little depressed? Maybe, but I got decades of experience, so whatever. This? Overload, so ronery... I need ice cream, and maybe bourbon. I have one of those... Ah well, it was still a complete blast to read, and I do love seeing these characters happy... no matter the cost. Good luck with the contest!
This was ridiculous in all the good ways.
8703603
Agreeed
8703534
Welcome to the inside of my head. Get your straightjacket from the corner.
8703603, 8703848
Thank you! Exactly what I was going for!
8704199
*Spins in a circle, desperately seeking the corner of the round, padded room.* Heh...hehe....ehehehehh... AHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH*collapses, twitching*
8704205
If you manage to get to Level 6, you can find a transdimensional corner on the second level of the Gobblegook house that appears from 3:25 AM to 5:49 AM on alternating Tuesdays as long as the Moon is waxing.
Yeah, no kidding.
That was fun.
8704950
Glad you enjoyed it! (Also I just realized how fitting that line is considering the story co-stars Moon Dancer and Minuette)
Well that was glorious! What happens when all the characters are dangerously genre savvy and are still powerless before it!
8705894
! That's what happens!
You get a hell of a lot of
This is amazing. This is the pinnacle of all shipping stories and meta comedy stories. After finishing it I had to put on a pair of sunglasses just so I could slowly remove them in shock.
8707341
Eeeeee! Hehehehehe. I'm pretty much just giggling nonstop now.
I guess you could say it was a... eye-opening experience?
<Insert Meme Here>
Some awesome shipping silliness and metahumor! And I find it all too plausible that neither Twilight nor Sunset has noticed Starlight and Trixie being an extremely obvious couple for months.
8720633
Thank you so much!
...but the question is, were they actually dating then? Can we ever KNOWWWWW?! WHO KNOWS?! NO ONE KNOWS! (Not even me.)
Damn, another contender ready to plow over me. *shakes his fists*
It was a splendid romp, a fun adventure and a dangerously high concentration of shipping. I loved it
8722945
Pbbt. Considering some of the other authors, I'm not holding my breath. Frankly, I just decided to have FUN and stayed with the word count limit.
Thank you very much! It was glorious... I may even come back to this concept!
Finally managed to work my way through this, better late than never right? It was a bit too slow and reference-heavy for me at first, but once it picked up I found myself enjoying it.
8730090
I'm glad you enjoyed it overall! I'm a bit confused about reference-heavy. Do you mean pop-culture reference or narrative technique reference?
8730286
Hmm... the pop culture ones, I think. They were a bit more distracting to me.
8730376
Fair enough. The style of this story is rather different than my normal fare. It wasn't bound to land perfectly with everyone. Such are the wages of madness like this!
This was the most cliché ridden story I have every read... And it's outstanding. Most funny stories get a snicker or perhaps a chuckle out of me, it's the rare story that makes me laugh out loud, but this one did it. I do love slapstick, absudist and aware humor, and this does outstanding on the latter two. Definitely getting in my favorites shelf, it deserves it.
8758658
i.imgur.com/ZxjwbLb.gif
Thank you so much! Considering this was my first attempt at characters being aware of the actions of the Narrative and my first attempt at absurdist, I'll take that a major win!
Seriously, this comment came at the perfect time. Thank you so much. I'm so happy you enjoyed it!
This was pretty fun. I really enjoy some good absurdism ever once in a while.
8965705
I'm super glad you liked it! It was definitely a fun experiment and I'm pretty surprised it folks enjoyed it so much since it was my first attempt at something like this. Not my normal fare at all!
But as long as you had fun, mission accomplished!
I absolutely love stories like this. It was like Secret Shipfic but in prose.
9139813
I can neither confirm nor deny that I'm hopelessly addicted to that game, to the point of making my own cards. Nope. Can't confirm or deny.
(Thank you!)
That was bonkers. :D I'm impressed you could keep everything straight.
though for how long9421913
...I had straight things in this story? I musta missed a spot. Seriously, straight is so relative in this story... HA!
Someone should do a movie based on this fix.
Great read.
9535004
Oh god, I couldn't even begin to handle a movie for this. Now you're making me want to release "The Narrative Cascade: Unleashed" edition.
I’m generally not a big fan of crack-fics or more farcical stories, but this was good.
10692916
That's fine! I'm usually not either. This was my attempt at doing something totally insane and fun. And it was totally insane and fun! So yay!
10693281
I think crack-fics and subtlety are mutually exclusive by definition.
10693290
Your welcome. Honestly I'd be happy with any sort of Half-life fanfic or crossover. (I just checked on Ao3, and now there are plenty, but man it's disheartening to find a HF fic from TV tropes or wherever and it hasn't been updated since, like, 2009. Or just to see that there aren't a whole lot in general. Alyx changed that, thankfully, but still.)
10693293
Yay!