Shimmercode: Syntax Terror

by FanOfMostEverything

Coronal Crass Inflection

Conversations at the Rainbooms' lunch table didn't take a turn for the absurd. That would imply that they didn't usually go in that direction. They occasionally took a turn for the relatively mundane.

"And it turns out Spike has been doing these videos for months, practically since the Friendship Games! He has a fandom. He has a trope page. He has an entire subreddis!"

Today was not such an occasion.

As Twilight paused for breath, Pinkie spoke up. "Wait, you didn't know about Fancy Fetch? I figured you were the one doing his editing."

"Actually, um..." Fluttershy toyed with her hair, the long locks currently arranged to one side, the better to block Twilight's line of sight. "That was me."

Magenta light parted her hair like a curtain, letting Twilight's stare through unhindered. It wasn't an angry stare. It was, if anything, distressingly neutral. It was the look of a young woman who didn't recognize that the novel assembly of biochemicals she was about to destructively analyze might object to that kind of thing. "Why?"

A hand on Twilight's shoulder got her to release Fluttershy. "Okay, Twilight?" said Sunset. "You're at a nine. We need you at maybe a three, three and a half."

After a moment, Twilight's face all but lit up. "Sorry. Especially to you, Fluttershy. It's just... Mom and Dad put a lot of trust in me when they got me that credit card, and finding surprise charges on it, especially of that magnitude..." She turned to her lunch tray and poked at her salad. "Well, I might have panicked a little."

"Just a skosh," said Fluttershy, who'd edited the raw footage and chose to say nothing about the teal flames and translucent raven wings that Twilight had manifested midway through her lecture on responsible spending habits. It was hardly the first time.

Twilight frowned and looked back at her. "My point stands, though. Why didn't either of you tell me about this? I mean, yes, it's clear that Spike's fan base—have I mentioned how crazy it is that I'm discussing my pet dog's Internet fan base?"

Applejack raised an eyebrow, reached under the lunch table, and effortlessly lifted the entire thing a few inches before gently setting it back down.

"Right, sorry, forgot our lives are insane in general." The eyelid twitches stopped after Twilight took a deep breath. "I'll try not to let it happen again."

"Spike wanted to surprise you," said Fluttershy.

Twilight rolled her eyes. "Well he certainly did that."

"Also, I think he planned on paying you back with his Benefacteor."

"Of course he has a Benefacteor. I'm surprised he hasn't gotten a sponsorship from a VPN service or something." Twilight grumbled to herself and supported her head in one hand as the other stabbed at her lunch.

Sunset cleared her throat. "So, uh, speaking of us on the Internet, it's getting around that time for another Shimmercode guest stream."

Dash's eyes lit up. "Awesome! Another Wonder vs. Cartcom 3 win streak comin' my way."

"Ooh! Ooh! Peyote Simulator!" Pinkie waved an original GameStation jewel case with Neighponese text against a cryptic, pixelated background. "They said they destroyed every copy, but I have my sources."

"Hey now, don't go gettin' ahead o' yerselves," said Applejack. "I figure Sunset'll wanna nice relaxin' time makin' somethin' in Cubecraft."

Rarity gasped and clasped her hands under her chin. "Ooh, yes, like that portrait of me we made together!"

"I was thinkin' more a house, but that'd work too. Or maybe a castle like Sunset said she used t' live in."

"Huh." Sunset put a hand to her chin. "We'll have to revisit that idea. We can't exactly do it on the stream, but making Equestrian Canterlot in Cubecraft does sound fun. But I didn't pick the next guest; I let the subscribers vote on it."

"And they didn't pick 'Guesty McGuestface'?" Pinkie whistled. "You must have the best audience ever!"

"More like I didn't allow write-ins," Sunset said with a smirk. "But I'm afraid they didn't vote for any of you."

Twilight blinked and looked up from her grumbling. "Well... I wouldn't be averse to—"

Sunset shook her head. "Not you either, Twi." She leaned over to look at her prospective guest. "Fluttershy, you ready for another round?"

"Me? Really?"

"Her? Really?" Applejack smacked Dash's forearm. "Hey, I'm happy for Fluttershy, I just wanted to kick Sunset's butt on camera."

Rarity gave her a half-lidded stare. "Rainbow, I watched some of that stream. Hers was not the butt being kicked, as it were."

"Fluttershy, your guest stream was one of the most popular I've ever had," said Sunset. She rolled her eyes. "And I figure half of it was my reaction to you actually kicking my butt. I'm sure a lot of my viewers just want to see me rage again."

"Everyone likes schadenfreude!" cried Pinkie. "Except when they don't."

After a few moments stroking her hair, Fluttershy said, "Well, I did have a lot of fun last time. And it's much easier to perform when I can't actually see the audience."

"Great! Though I should warn you, this time things are going to go differently."

"Are we not playing Nutsy's Fun-Time Scurry?"

"No, this time we're doing something a bit more..." Sunset's smile shifted to something that would have suited her before the Fall Formal. "Hardcore."

---

"Come on. Come on!"

"Oh! Sunset, I—"

"Just relax, Fluttershy. I've done this kind of thing dozens of times before. This is perfectly normal for this part."

"I... I mean, I have done it a few times by myself but— Oh!"

"There we go! Now the real fun can start!"

"I mean, this is... nice, but I've never done it in front of... of an audience before."

"It's okay, Shy. No one's judging. We're all just here for some fun. And maybe to make a few bucks, am I right, folks?"

"I mean, I..."

"Worst case scenario, we'll have clips on EweTube to laugh at with everyone else."

"H-How many of our friends watch this again?"

"Pretty sure the whole school was talking about last week. Twilight did things I've never thought of."

"Oh my..."

"Now..." Sunset paused to check her Spasm channel's chat log and scowled. "Oh, real mature, guys. Yeah, you all hang on to that audio, it's the closest you'll ever get."

Fluttershy looked over from the TV that was probably bigger than Sunset should have been able to afford with a job at a mall food court sushi place, currently displaying a mostly black screen. The flickering flames in one corner showed that the connected PC was still loading the next stage of the newest update to Tirek's Revenge, Circus Pandemonium. "Um... what?"

"Nothing to worry about, Shy. Just the Internet being the Internet."

"Oh." Fluttershy shuddered and recalled the last time she'd looked over Zephyr Breeze's shoulder at his computer. It had taken an entire squeeze bottle of hand sanitizer, a neodymium magnet, and a flask of holy water for her to feel clean again, and that had just been for the laptop. "They should all be ashamed of themselves."

Sunset smirked and nodded. "Yes. Yes, they should." A guitar riff sounded from the smaller monitor at the TV's side. "Hey, emanresu69! Thanks for the five thousand bits! 'Forgive us, Flutter-sama,' followed by about seven exclamation points and a crying emoji." She shook her head. "Pretty sure you'll need more cute cat videos to buy her forgiveness, guys."

"They do help," Fluttershy said with a giggle.

A low bass drone from the TV cut off any further banter. Both girls turned their attention to the screen, where their avatars dashed into a grim arena painted red by the glow of open magma flows and the viscera of past victims. Every piece of the scenery was covered in skulls, blood, black iron spikes, red-and-black diamond patterns, or some combination thereof.

Sunset rolled her eyes. "Okay, Tirek, we get it. You're an evil demon."

"No offense?"

That got a snort from Sunset and a torrent of lols in chat. Few if any of the stream's viewers knew the origin of the running gag, but it had taken a life of its own on Shimmercode.

The evil demon in question appeared in the corner of the screen, or at least his head did, along with the text of his booming proclaimation. "IMPUDENT MORTALS! THE RINGMASTER HAS BEEN FAR TOO LENIENT WITH YOU! ONLY ONE MAY FACE ME IN THE GRAND FINALE."

"Can't always get what you want," said Sunset.

"Um..." Fluttershy gulped as familiar, crackling clouds of demonic magic flowed across the edges of the screen, making both player characters seize up and glow as red as their surroundings. "I think he's going to this time."

"LET US SEE WHO HAS THE HONOR OF DYING BY MY HAND!"

Sunset leaned her head back until it was drooping of the edge of the couch and groaned. "Ugh, forced PvP, really? I thought they'd learned their lesson after the Cliffs of Betrayal in the first game. Maelstrom, what are you doing?"

"We could wait it out," said Fluttershy.

"No, if you do that, the game kills everyone. We'll just—" Sunset stopped dead. So did her warlock, chopped in half by Fluttershy's barbarian. "Did... did you just...?"

Fluttershy held up her empty hands, the controller still on her lap. "It's still a cutscene! I didn't do anything!"

Tirek's sadistic laughter drowned out whatever Sunset might have said in response. "A MIGHTY BLOW! BUT NOTHING TO ME!" His enormous torso burst out of the spiky, skull-laden center of the arena, the rest of him still beneath it.

Fluttershy gulped. Sunset had helped her build her character to soak up damage while the much more fragile warlock disintegrated everything within reach. Her solo offensive options were... limited. "Um, do you want to take over?"

She looked over and met a face even more hellishly furious than the one onscreen, with slit pupils to match. "Seriously? Seriously!?" Sunset's hair began to waver in a heat haze. "They pull this kind of cork-horned peevishness right at the end of thirty-dollar DLC?"

"Peevish...?"

"And I will bet you my cutie mark that it's completely random." Sunset leapt to her feet and started pacing, arms flying in furious gestures. "The RNG just decides which one of us it likes more and ruts the others into the dirt like a bunch of mud ponies at a family reunion!"

"Um, Sunset—"

"And it goes for the moon-banished feather duster over the mare who actually runs this stream, because of course it does." Sunset's pacing took her directly in front of Fluttershy.

She tried to lean around, only to track the progress of the ranting girl. "Could you please mo—" A bloodcurdling scream burst from the speakers. When Sunset moved out of Fluttershy's field of view, Tirek goring the barbarian on his horns took her place. Fluttershy sighed and released the controller. "Never mind."

"You think you're so fizzling high and..." Fluttershy turned in time to see Sunset look at her in confusion, gaze going from face to shoulders to hands. After Sunset looked to her own flexing fingers, she said, "Oh." The realization in her eyes turned to horror. She collapsed back onto the couch. "Oh, Fluttershy, I am so sorry."

After a deep breath, Fluttershy sighed. "It's okay, Sunset."

"It's kind of you to say that, but it really isn't. I know it isn't. I swear, I didn't mean a word of that. When Dad got a few licks of salt in him... Well, that was pretty much the only interaction I had with the other tribes aside from wing envy. I never bothered to get to know anypony growing up. I didn't even know what most of that meant before that time I stubbed my hoof in front of the princess." Sunset buried her face in her hands. "And now I'm probably going to get banned from Spasm for that kind of language."

"Sunset, you never actually swore."

Sunset showed no sign of hearing her. "And... Oh Celestia, Fluttershy, I don't know how you can forgive me for that kind of behavior, but I know the others won't. I'm going to have call up Pinkie and Applejack and—"

"Is this about the 'feather duster' thing?"

Sunset drew back like Fluttershy had smacked her. "You can't... Well, I guess you can, but only because you're a..." Sunset trailed off, looked at her hands again, groaned, and facepalmed. "Right. Humans. You have no idea what I'm even talking about."

Fluttershy shrugged. "Well, I think I have a good idea of it, but I also think we have a bigger issue."

"What?"

"We're still streaming." Fluttershy pointed at the camera set just below the TV.

"Oh." Sunset stared at it for several seconds. "So we are." Then she looked at Spasm chat and immediately wished she hadn't. "Horse apples."

---

So yeah, kind of forgot what world I was on. Twice.

Can you d Sorry. Inside joke. Go on.

The bad news is that I kind of let slip that I'm an alien pony. Not necessarily magical unicorn, but I did give my stream viewers a crash course in Equestrian profanity.

Sunset waited an uncomfortably long time for a response. Though given the way the pages of the magical journal kept wrinkling and unwrinkling into the shape of a pony's forehead, she could guess what was causing the delay.

Is there good news?

Well, people still aren't sure whether or not it was staged. And they're honestly more amused than anything. I was apparently very quotable. But I can't rule out people with worse senses of humor and more interest in my birth certificate finding out about this.

So we need to move up the diplomacy timetable?

Sunset looked to the other side of the bed. Twilight's human analogue hadn't been able to choose between trying to comfort her dear friend and fretting about harboring the most illegal immigrant imaginable and had compromised on a big-spoon death-grip cuddle that left Sunset immobilized from the waist down.

You could say that.

Author's Note:

To be clear, Sunset isn't under arrest, investigation, or anything else at the moment. She just thought it would be prudent not to spend the night in her house.

We're going by Prachettian morphic field behavior: Once you magically change shape, it's exponentially easier to return to that shape later on. After all, we see that with ponying up. The occasional moment when Twilight and Sunset's inner demons externalize themselves logically follows suit. Rest assured, it's totally harmless.

For them.

Spike's EweTube channel is from this short, Tirek's Revenge is from this short (and I'm treating it as the EqG world's equivalent of the Diablo series,) Shimmercode is from this short, and Peyote Simulator is a riff on LSD Simulator, which is a real piece of PS1 software that exists. My apologies for any technical inaccuracies that weren't put there by canon.

Comments

[RainbowDoubleDash]

peevishness

Sunset! Language!

I love that this is the one Equestrian curse word we know for absolute certain.

[Blaze3713]

Not too bad.

I know that I liked the Shimmercode short, and a friend and I have a few ideas.

[Thought Prism]

Wait, if 'fizzling' is an Equestrian curse, does that mean Tempest's real name is MORE edgy than her adopted one?

[RainbowDoubleDash]

9805224
Certainly puts a different spin on Pinkie’s overjoyed reaction to hearing it...

[Darkstarling]

Wow, that is the most racist pony rant I’ve ever seen. Eesh Sunset, you’re just *lucky* no one knows what you just said. You ever go back to Equestrian it’s going to be a rough transition.

This is what comes if not having to adjust your vocabulary post villainy :p

And so we learn the truth. Tempest didn’t change her name because it’s cutesy, she changed it because it’s RUDE.

[NaiadSagaIotaOar]

Ooo, I love that chapter title

[Bugsydor]

That was an amazing tidal wave of invective. Fantastic swears are really fun to come up with, aren't they?

[Aurora Dimmet]

Wow just a little tribalist there, screwhead?

[River Road]

He has an entire subreddis!

For anyone else I would've suspected a typo but for you I was 80% sure that was intentional. Possibly developed by human Discord when he wasn't working on 6kun.
...then it took me a minute or so to get Benefacteor because, I get it now, but seriously?
And at Wonder vs. Cartcom 3 I decided to simply give up and go with the flow.

"Everyone likes schadenfreude!" cried Pinkie. "Except when they don't."

I'm honestly surprised there wasn't some kind of cameo or at least nod to the character.

Also, like much of your headcanon, Nutsy's Fun-Time Scurry is the official name to me now.

I'd love to comment on the rest of the story as well, but I honestly can't think of anything to say half as good as the story itself and half of it would probably have to be spoilered anyway. Suffice to say that this was another excellent work that left me highly amused, and I'm now going to cram this down the throats of all my friends.

[Darkstarling]

I still like ‘what the tarts’ as a pony swear, though what Cerberus thinks of it is another question.

9805224
Yes, yes it does. You don’t want to know what ‘berrytwist’ is a euphemism for, but I’m sure several possibilities leap to mind.

[Dave Bryant]

. . . Did you switch around the story and chapter titles?

[dvdspires]

Guesty McGuestface. Saw that and all I could think of was this.

[River Road]

9805286
Berrytwist is probably an infamous Equestrian drink. Presumably fizzling, popping and copious amounts of berrytwist were all involved in making her.

[Flashgen]

Even pony swearing is magical. Hilarious story.

[FanficReader920]

This series you have going is magical!

[kwr2k13]

9805214
Yeah, the Ponish to English language tends to make all swear words at least a TV-7 rating. Old Ponish sounds like Latin from what Starlight Glimmer translated in Starswirl the Bearded's journal Sunburst discovered in his Blind barrel haul at the antique store in Uncommon Bond.

[Nick_The_Savage_174]

Why was there a sex tag on this fic?

[Malandy]

Whooo! So good!

This is a series? What's it called?

[Moosetasm]

I love how the journal translates “face plant” from one dimension to another.

[FanOfMostEverything]

9805214
Agreed. Nothing tells you about a culture quite like its profanity.

9805224 9805226 9805286 9805341
As much as I love the idea of Tempest Shadow being the more socially acceptable name for Miss Tall, Dark, and Deadly, this is a case of loss in translation. Going from Equish* to Wranglish to English means that the somewhat vulgar unicorn slang term meaning "a malformed spell pattern uselessly expending the energy put into it" got conflated with the sound a sparkly firework's secondary explosions.

That said, I completely accept the idea of berrytwist being a liqueur. One of the main characters is named Applejack, after all.

* To paraphrase Nick Fury, I recognize that canon has made a decision in this regard, but given that it's a stupid-ass decision, I have elected to ignore it.

9805236
If Princess Twilight ever sees the EweTube video, she's going to wash out Sunset's mouth with soap. And if Princess Celestia ever sees it...
Well, truth be told, she might get nostalgic.

Also, see above for the fizzle issue.

9805247
They really are. Especially tribe-specific one. Pegasi have "feather," unicorns have "cork-horned," and they say Granny Smith can curse the apples off a tree.

9805253
Give the pinhead a break, she's barely cast a spell in the last few years. You know how they can get.

[FanOfMostEverything]

9805254
Between the comics and MythrilMoth's work, I have fully embraced the idea of Bland Name Products in the EqG world.

Also, while I'm aware of the character Schadenfreude, I don't find him remotely funny, so there's that.

Glad to hear you enjoyed this, and that I was able to supplement your headcanon.

9805307
They haven't changed since submission, but I did switch them when I decided that I liked the chapter title enough to make it the story's title instead. You know, when I was carrying over the text to Fimfic. Should I be concerned?

9805340
That is indeed the reference I had in mind. And the reason why Sunset didn't allow write-ins.

9805449
I'm going to have to echo 9805630's surprise. What series did you mean? This isn't part of the Oversaturated World, if that's what you meant.

9805573
At the risk of channeling Mudbriar, Old Ponish is actually Old English.

[Dave Bryant]

9805688
Probably only about my mental state.

. . . You know, I actually prefer “Ponish” over any fan-created name I’ve ever seen. It just seems more euphonious, really.

[FanOfMostEverything]

9805625
Suggestive dialogue and a comment about earth ponies that even Sunset found tasteless.

9805647
Celestia specifically added that function after Sunset's tenth failed friendship lesson, to better communicate her frustration in an untraceable way. Twilight didn't question the enchantment when she copied it in the new journal.

[Darkstarling]

9805678
Okay, you win, ‘fizzy’ being from sloppy spell structure is just better.

Get Bent is an in-unicorn racial curse coming from how dark magic tends to make your horn weird. Mix of ‘go to hell’ and calling someone the devil.

I still think that the any*species* thing is from lingering xenophobia and tribalism in pony society, with ‘anycreature’ being considered the clunky pc substitution. They don’t go to ‘anyone’ because linguistically it’s hardly intuitive.

Related, Equish has species suffixes pretty deeply rooted, like gender in Romance languages. They USED to break ‘anypony’ out by tribe, but post unification those words are NOT something you say.

[MixMassBasher]

Worst case scenario, they just think she's a pegasister

[Moosetasm]

9805696
And that’s how societies go into decline. Copying the previous generations art and tech without actually developing them on their own or innovating or understanding how it actually works.

[FanficReader920]

9805688
You referenced Spike's internet following, so I reasoned that the story about that is part of a series with this one.

[The Iguana Man]

Sunset looked to the other side of the bed. Twilight's human analogue hadn't been able to choose between trying to comfort her dear friend and fretting about harboring the most illegal immigrant imaginable and had compromised on a big-spoon death-grip cuddle that left Sunset immobilized from the waist down.

Well, better hope she lets go before your next stream, Sunny, or else your little claim that vaguely suggestive audio is the most your viewers are gonna get... might turn out to be inaccurate.

Not that I'm complaining, mind you.

[FanOfMostEverything]

9805703
"Get bent" carries some very nasty connotations towards Eastern unicorns as well.

"Anyone" and "anybody" would be highly valuable linguistic imports from the human world, provided Twilight can get them to catch on.

They USED to break ‘anypony’ out by tribe, but post unification those words are NOT something you say.

Yeah, "Shadow Play" skipped over that really awkward moment where Star Swirl gambled on when he was in the timestream and lost badly.

9805705
But that would mean the show exists in that world, which leads to the question of whether the movies do, and I don't think anyone but Pinkie is prepared to travel down that rabbit hole.

9805710
Oh, Twilight knew what the spell did. She just didn't ask why it was included, because opening the can of worms that was Sunset and Celestia's past relationship wasn't on the agenda for at least another two months.

9805713
Oh! I see the problem. No, that was a reference to yet another EqG short. Sorry for the confusion.

9805825
Nor am I. Heck, the thought of losing her personal cuddling unicorn might just get Twilight to reevaluate certain feelings...

[Darkstarling]

9805957
At least for Starswirl it was an archaic term rather than something current *cough*Sunset*cough* and something which, for the day, was actually on the PC side. The non-unicorns did manage to put up with him after all. But connotations have changed a bit since then. Like how I’ve been told ‘coloured’ used to be polite whereas now...

Stygian, on the other hand, seems the sort who actually would have been really good about avoiding racial stuff a few centuries ahead of his time.

[The Iguana Man]

9805957

We can always hope but, for the moment, I'm not sure Sunset's complaining about that her position.

[River Road]

9805678
So we're back to my previous headcanon that Fizzy's parents named her a unicorn euphemism for "useless runt". I think whichever way you berrytwist it, Tempest Shadow might be the preferable name.

[ungulateman]

Sunset Shimmer in Heated Gamer Moment [NOT CLICKBAIT]

[The Voice in the Water]

Sunset! Such language young lady!

Though TBH, surprise, forced PvP always ticks me off in games, especially team based ones where you're building a character. Thankfully, they don't do that all that often these days.

Gotta admit, that was delightfully warped, especially the innuendo at the beginning of the game session. Bravo.

And did I detect a little SciSet at the end. Because if yes, thank you for the yummy desert to end a fun meal story.

[Herald of Opera]

9806775
This is drawing from a canon short, and it didn't go that way in said short either. >_>

[Herald of Opera]

So we need to move up the diplomacy timetable?

That formal relations haven't already been started is mostly a function of perpetually being in Current Year, and the attendant wanting to wait for the next presidential administration.

[MarblePieLover]

hey how about fnaf Sister location
you will have a funtime with freddy and the minirenias

[Neece]

Hilarious but also extremely curious on a sequel and what shenanigans would come from it. Especially from the demon bits if they get on TV.

[The Great Derpsby]

The legends about Unicorns being attracted to virgins is rooted in some very ugly Earth Pony rumours.

The legends about how they lure prey with their head-lights, like deep sea fish, didn't catch on quite as readily.

[RK_Striker_JK_5]

That was flippin' brilliant. I wish I had more to add, sorry. But just dang, Sunset, language! :D

[Malandy]

9805957

Wait, it's a spell specifically for faceplants / head desks into the book?

I thought it'd be easier to just transmit all alterations / wrinkles to the paper and restore any damage after.

Which would be a stranger set of functions to include, but seems easier than isolating head desking / face planting out, specifically.

...

But, if you're wanting to transmit faceplants, you focus on that and don't generalize it, I guess.

[Eroraf86]

I love it and I must have more. Shimmercode rage is glorious.

[_Undefined_]

"Fluttershy, your guest stream was one of the most popular I've ever had," said Sunset. She rolled her eyes. "And I figure half of it was my reaction to you actually kicking my butt.

Sunset, this is the internet. The vote was determined by one thing and one thing only. And Princess Twilight may not have told you, but in Equestria, Fluttershy was once a model.

Can you d Sorry. Inside joke. Go on.

I feel like I'm supposed to get this, but I can't figure out to what Twilight is referring. Assistance requested.

[Yutah123]

Brilliant, my dear, brilliant!!!

Seeing Sunset get, excuse my language, peeved like that is very amusing.

... Which is the whole point. Huh.

[FanOfMostEverything]

9806515
The good news is that the rest of CHS didn't make a big deal out of it.

The bad news is that "cork-horned peevishness" became one of the iconic memes of Current Year.

9806771
This is me we're talking about. If I can't slip at least a little Sciset into the story, it's probably because neither of them appear in it.

And yeah, the ending of Circus Pandemonium was considered one of Maelstrom's biggest missteps since the "Don't you guys have phones?" debacle.

9806775 9806951
Ever since she got her necklace, when Fluttershy curses, it sounds like random animal noises, which ends up sounding more cute than anything. Unless she's yelling at Zephyr, in which case it sounds like he's being mauled by most of Earth's major predators.

9807218
This is after a good dozen people uploaded footage of Juniper Monstar rampaging through Canterlot Mall. Everyone knows something weird's going on in that town, but it's not hurting anyone, which means certain paranormal defense forces that may or may not exist and are definitely operating on a tight budget don't need to pay a visit. Any more than they already have.

9807698
Yeah, everyone knows unicorn horns evolved as a way for unicorns to know when it was safe to merge into traffic in foggy conditions.

[FanOfMostEverything]

9807760 9808009 9808385
I can't promise anything in the way of a sequel, but I'm glad you enjoyed the angry horse noises.

9807867
I'm really not good at explaining this, am I? The spell does carry over most forms of reshaping the page shortly before repairing both. However, Twilight could tell that it was added to the communication spell after the fact, and there are a few scratches on the inside back cover commensurate with a certain large horn scraping against it.

9808118
Oh, there were definitely a lot of people voting to get the hottest of Sunset's friends back on camera. And some of them didn't vote for Fluttershy. This is a highly subjective judgement, after all. But many others had indeed voted for Fluttershy in the hopes of seeing her devastate Sunset in another adorable console game for kindergartners.

As for the inside joke...

[The Voice in the Water]

9808525
To be fair, if Maelstrom and their parent company Livelysight hadn't been getting such bad PR for their aggressive monetization in their other games like Cry of Obligation, Planet of Battleline, Observeabove, or Fate or chose to announce it somewhere other than a convention traditionally associated with PC gaming, they might not have garnered as much loathing for the Tirek's Revenge: Deathless announcement.

Say what you want about the developers of Battlechasis, they at least garner good community rapport by being honest with their playerbase and not treating them like sheep.

[Platinumwayne]

I don't understand the Gore tag

[Arcane_Sigil]

9808832
Give it time. Sunset's been outed as an "alien from another world". Humans as a species apparently have to kill things to understand how they work.

[Hopeful_Ink_Hoof]

9808832

"No, if you do that, the game kills everyone. We'll just—" Sunset stopped dead. So did her warlock, chopped in half by Fluttershy's barbarian. "Did... did you just...?"

Tirek goring the barbarian on his horns took her place.

Not very explicit in description, but it does sort of fit.