If the main OCs in this story were voiced, what would they sound like?

9393122
Hard to say, as I'm a very visual thinker, I don't even vocalize my own thoughts in my head. I leave that for the readers to imagine. There are a lot of characters in this story.

I can say that as time goes on Phobia will start to try to emulate Rarity's tone and speech patterns, at least in the waking world. She wants to assert her feminity and she sees Rarity as a strong example of pony feminity. In the dream world it will be a more low, rumbling voice.

Sunset Blessing imagine something close to Principle Cinch from EqG. In how her tone goes and how she holds herself.

Tonya's closest voice might be Rainbow Dash, with a slightly higher pitch.

Amanda has a medium pitch, not too high or low.

Devon's closest voice counterpart would probably be Cheerilee, with a bit less pep.

I found several spelling errors throughout the story. At over 11000 words coping and pasting them on my tablet would be a chore.

Nice ending and I see Sunset Blessing is definitely starting to go mad with power. I hope she will survive if it all comes down around her.

9393363
Yeah, it was rough getting this one out. I'm just kind of exhausted. Ready for my little break from writing

9393363
Okay, did a full editing pass on it. That was much worse than I thought it be. Been sick and exhausted. Chapter is cleaned up now.

9393432

Sorry to make you do this all when you where under the weather. Take the next few weeks off and focus on you!

We have an unwritten rule around the Enclave at this point that we only catch them every once other day

Once every other day.

Her eyes went wife.

Wide.

These were the only mistakes that I found. Pretty good ending. I take it you’re waiting until Aftermath has finished before doing the next one.

9393804
Yeah, waiting for Aftermath to finish. ASGeek has only let me in on very few of his plans in Aftermath. Mainly things needed for consulting on some scenes to make sure we're keeping canon consistent. He knows far more about what is coming from me and able to account for it than I do him. So he could still throw me a curve ball on things I need to adjust for in canon.

a grate story line that i am enjoying so much.
i am looking forward to more installments.

a vrry enjoyable story

I applaud you Halira for a fantastic story.

"We can do better than the Equestrians did," Sunset insisted.

*sigh* ah, the warped mind of a racist. Bending into pretzels to prevent from admitting that ponies aren't superior.

Anyway, I really liked this story. I'm... still not entirely on board with the Dreamwardens and how powerful you made them (though that also extends to night ponies in general), but I'll definitely shower praise for making them morally ambiguous. That's not an easy thing to do for authors when it comes to their own creations.

It was a lot of fun -sometimes in the sad, heart-breaking way- to see the characters of the last story continue their lives. And there are really obvious improvements in your writing skills. Speaking of which...

9393394
By all means take a breather. Nothing's worse than burning yourself out on something you enjoy.

Tip for when you come back then: you still seem to be confusing your (possessive, 'your book', 'your tail') and you're (short for "you are", 'you're cute', 'you're in trouble')

That was a nice ending to this story. Love the way you worked Candice in there too. Very much approve. Readers will see her when I start publishing chapters. Still working on it though.

9394509
I'm aware of different you(s) and their uses. When writing quickly and using all three frequently it gets difficult to switch gears. I catch it usually sometime well after the fact. I tend to write quickly and not concern about spelling or anything else until the chapter is written. Spellchecker of course recognizes it as correctly spelled, and the eyes of the author are the least reliable for catching errors .

The power of night ponies was actually established before I got on the scene. There's no question that a great deal of the trouble in the Pandemic universe was caused by the vision and Sunset Shimmer used night ponies specifically to impliment it. The power to influence dreams is a powerful one that can lead to control of a large population. The Dreamwardens are extremely powerful, but they are a check on the already established powers of the night ponies.

The pegasi are actually the most OP tribe with the night ponies held in check. The ability to alter weather is not to be underestimated, and this is almost exclusively a pegasi ability. Some other differences between pegasi and night ponies that I haven't highlighted are pegasi are much faster fliers, pegasi can reach greater altitudes than night ponies, and night ponies can't cloudwalk. Because they are the most mobile tribe with an almost universal ability to impact the enviroment on a large scale through weather the tribe I would be most concerned with are the pegasi since they have few limiting factors.

Unicorns are capable of getting really powerful through intensive study. But they don't come by using the greater part of their abilities naturally like the pegasi or night ponies do. This is their limiting factor.

Earth ponies don't typically reach the same OP levels of power as the other tribes (with some exceptionally rare cases like Wild Growth). The fact that the other tribes generally suck at producing enough food is what gives the earth ponies their power over other tribes. The other tribes are more dependent on the earth ponies than they are each other.

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There's a bit of a difference between "night ponies can alter people's dreams" and "many night ponies have extremely powerful and hard-to-remove mind control powers" though. I mean, the core plot of this entire story was finding a plot reason as to why night ponies aren't ruling the world yet because of it.

And yes, earth ponies do tend to be the forgotten child of MLP. Though if we look at the more higher end examples their strength can reach rather ludicrous levels.

I hope the show gives earth ponies some more magical love soon. I always liked the idea of earth ponies being good at creating magical items, since their lack of overt magic would lead to them relying on tools more.

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The mind magic is actually a minority of night ponies. Most have no ability to use it. It is just that the ability is so strong that it makes those that can use it extremely frightful to deal with and prone to extreme abuses. The ability only shows up in night ponies at a higher rate than other ponies, it is not an exclusive ability to them (Tonya is a clear example of a pony with the ability who isn't a night pony, Jenny is another example, Fluttershy is yet another, Starlight demonstrates unicorns are capable of learning the ability).

That higher rate needs to be clarified. We are talking about 1-2% of the total night pony population, leaving 98-99% not using mind magic. The non-night pony population might have a natural affinity for it at something like a .01% rate or less. Riverview had over a hundred night ponies it produced two with mind magic abilities in Phobia Remedy and Swift Strike. Tonya was random chance out of the rest of the pony population.

In Aftermath in Denver only two night ponies are referenced to having the ability, out of an even larger number of night ponies.

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... I will admit, that was not the impression I got out of this story. The impression I got here was that the majority of night ponies had the ability, hence the Dreamwardens were needed yesterday to patrol the lot of them and bind them with the race-wide compulsions against mind magic and such.

9394988
They are primarily concerned with the dreamwalking aspect, which is capable of being used as pseudo-mind control and other abuses. The fact that they have still potentially between 10K and 40K night ponies worldwide that can potentially use actual mind magic is still a major concern after you take into account how many one pony is capable of impacting.

They also don't know who can and can't use mind magic without seeing it being used in person or in a pony's memories. They have to go with a running assumption with any night pony that there is a possibility they might be able to, and make the restrictions clear as well as encourage reporting of abuses. They can deal with dreamwalking abuses immediately, they need information gathering to deal with mind magic abuses.

This surely was a amazing story and I really enjoyed reading it. I can't wait for the continuation of this story.

But I also have question. I know and understand that you are going to take a break from writing for a while now. But will you continue your "Last Days of Ponykind" Fanfiction after the break? I'm still very interested how this story will continue

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Yeah, that's next on the agenda. That and starting some entries into Anthology. I'm also writing out the prologue and finishing the epilogue for Monsters We Make. (I know it's strange to be doing the epilogue before most the rest of the story, but I have a definite plan on how this all ends and the two are kind of themed as prologue is thanksgiving year 6 and epilogue is thanksgiving year 7).

Right now I'm going to be re-reading through my own work on Last Days just to make sure I'm not forgetting anything I had going. I have the ending planned out, but want to see if there is anything I want to adjust in my plans for it after having sat back from it for a while.

You spelled your pre-reader's name wrong, it's "Cander" with an "e", not an "o".

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That's embarrassing, fixed.

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Can't wait to dive in, good day to you.

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I know. That's why I said I do physical maps and not political.

9749414
This is part of alt universe so overriding show a little. We're counting maybe 0.1% of the adult Equestrian population as unmarked, enough to get the slur blank flank tossed about and that it isn't unheard of just rare. This is something that would happen to ponies that had some sort of major trauma or isolation that "threw their destinies out of order." To give an example Tempest might have had a natural talent for using magic, but the breaking of her horn before she got her cutie mark through that out of order. Adult blank flanks make other ponies extremely uncomfortable and others tend to lash out and ostracize them as a result--this in turn makes the unmarked pony become more angry and anti-social and becomes bad tempered with others which reinforces the idea 'blank flanks' are bad. It's a cycle.

9749578
Thanks. Your reply does fix the issue (almost in full, will write more below) - I was nearly disconnected from the story because of that, so many thanks for clarification. (and surely, Sunset Shimmer herself is very AU, so there should be no questions here too. Except they were)

Yes, in my frantic attempt to integrate the piece I got the idea of 'broken fate/broken talent' myself.

Maybe it's possible to reiterate/retcon/expand that part of Luna clarifying about adult blank flanks? To get your reply integrated in the flow of story itself? No worries if that's too much of a request. It works much better for me now, and it's not like it annoys someone else here. But this is really just one issue that stand off for me.

...It's still more '(un)natural fear', as we can be feared of cancer and old age, or leper in old ages. than bigotry though. The end result is the same, but... well. There is a difference in process.

9749662
I may give a little more thorough in story explanation in Pandemic: Monsters We Make since that is still in progress and I have foals (Jessie, Jackie, Phobia's foals, and more) who'd be worried about getting cutie marks there where it can flow well with the narrative.

9749578
Adding some more to that last message of me - we see in Pandemic and Aftermath that marks do actively seek connection to adult ponies, and can be persuaded to hold back in some circumstances; and they do give ponies content and closure (mostly. Tom and Amanda were brilliantly written to stay an exception).

So adult blank flanks aren't just rare, they are inherently unhappy on top of that. Which does not make them themselves bad, of course! But it can ignite that endless circle you just wrote about.

And still, for yet unknown reason, bigotry as described by Luna feels over the top.

Maybe because the mark does in fact work as some sort of graduation certificate, so the pony is not fully and thoroughly wrong in thinking that adult blank flank is less competent than marked foal...

But it's your text after all.

Maybe I just fail under the same bigotry.

9749701
The idea of it being a graduation certificate to 'adulthood', whether they are fully an adult or not, is something ASGeek and I have discussed. At these early stages after ETS that idea is not really apparent, but as years progress this will be seen as something that is strong in the Transformed Pony culture even more so than Equestrian.

In our discussions of Equestrian language we have It as something that is present in Equestrian culture as well, since we have even discussed so far as It being engrained in Equestrian language where you address someone with a mark different than someone without or someone you're unsure of the status of.

9749715

Yup. So, I found these Luna words once again (chapter 51), and re-read it with what was said here in mind.

It works.

'Senseless bigotry' is still notably over the top (there is sense in this! Otherwise it would not be ingrained in language), but... but then again, we have Luna here, and very annoyed Luna, no less! She does say brutal and not-so-correct things many times in this universe.

'Fear-driven prejudice' may be more correct. But no correction needed - it's okay from Luna's standpoint in that scene.

10131192
I think it has well been established the numbers of people on earth still without any magic whatever is vanishingly small and practically extinct. There was already a scarce number with magic jump started by previous Equestrian expeditioners, from which there was never any going back. Since ETS, almost everyone got magic whether they transformed or not, and it cannot be gotten rid of once you’ve had any exposure. Anyone whose been in the mere presence of influenza at any point, exposed to TF spells, or merely being in the presence of ponies got it, whether it’s useful or not. Once again I cannot help but think this subtly overlaps with FF, where this was likewise the case with different rules otherwise.

Finally gave these things a shot and i gotta say: there's nothing wrong with writing a simple story with a girl coming to terms with who she is! The first one was fine. You don't need to add ponies more powerful than a frickin alicorn and mares needed mental surgery because there are no stallions and everyone important being a secret mind controlller and luna violating a treaty with nobody doing anything about it. And her being a dream torturer. The story was fine without it. This just kills it for me.

10330096
It is a different type of story from the original, and you are welcome not to find it your thing.

This story along with Monsters We Make are the two darkest stories in this AU before it lightens up again, with Monsters We Make being the consequences coming to everyone (including the Dreamwardens) for the events of Picking Up the Pieces and Aftermath. The two stories I'm writing right now (Starting Over and Marshmallow Dreams) are kind of the redemption after the fall for different characters.

Got a question, because lost an exact sense of time while reading this one vs. What You are Meant to Be (not yet done the latter's re-read). Roughly how many days after the counter-spell was the first dream warden made, and how many for the Trial?

11733069
I'd have to go back and check, but roughly a month.

11733069
Trials primarily persisted for six months after the first; after that, an unofficial agreement was in place with the US government. Trials still occurred infrequently after that, but they were primarily for ponies outside the USA, and even then, they slowed down; since night ponies had essentially gotten the picture, nothing was getting past the Dreamwardens. A few years later, they signed a formal treaty with the UN, and 99% of legal actions took place in regular courts after that–although Dreamwardens tended to hand out fines like candy and could issue arrest warrants. They would take direct action in some rare and severe cases if the person presented a clear and immediate threat.