• Member Since 24th Jul, 2019
  • offline last seen 9 hours ago

Casketbase77


Routine day with a dirt cheap brush, then a week goes by and it goes untouched. Then two, then three, then a month, and the rest of your life you beat yourself up. - Aesop Rock, "Rings"

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Source

The Wonderbolt Barracks are haunted, but not very well. Which is weaker: Fluttershy’s nerve, or one sorry specter’s skills at spooking?

Brief, awkward comedy featuring fumbling characters doing their very best with the skills that they have.


This is an entry in the Snippet Series, an anthology of old oneshots that I (and my good buddy Str8aura) wrote based around interesting pics I found. New ones will be posted every Thursday for the foreseeable future.

Chapters (2)
Comments ( 25 )

This was adorable! That’s a definite upvote from me.

This was nice does it have a sequel because I want to know how the other things go for stock image

Well, that's one way to get a little school spirit.

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Darn it all; that would’ve been a much cuter title for chapter 2 than the one I went with. Oh well.

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Sorry to say this is just a oneshot at the moment, just like the other Snippets in the anthology. I have been toying with eventually acknowledging some continuity between them, though. Might contrive some cameos (or at the very least offhanded mentions) for Stock Image or Vitty in future installments.

Delightful stuff. And Dash is lucky Fluttershy didn't sic Discord on her for that stunt. Thank you for this.

“My guess is my bones are at the bottom of a swamp somewhere.”

Actually, one of a hydra's heads was yawning at that very moment in that swamp... :trollestia:

So this was cute. :twilightsmile: Part of me almost wants to nudge for some kind of follow-up, no matter how brief, but I can't actually suggest anything that'd be enough for a storyplot at the moment. :twilightsheepish:

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...or that Discord didn't sic himself on Dash, because, well...would you ever know if that guy was watching or not watching? And honestly, I wouldn't put it past him to discreetly do so, at least from time to time, for precisely this sort of reason. :rainbowlaugh:

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Then it was probably for the better that nobody ever found the "remains" then. Saved everybody the unpleasantness. :pinkiesick:

I'm glad Fluttershy convinced Stock Image to do something with herself that's a bit more prosocial than giving ponies heart attacks. Although, it looks like the underwhelming result of Image's attempt to spook Fluttershy was more Rainbow Dash's fault than Image's.

Does she have a brother named Sample Text? I bet he plays a lot of Call of Duty.

twelve moons

The show has a weird relationship with the word "year", doesn't it? Several important things happened "a thousand years ago", but other than that, there seems to be a conscious attempt to avoid references to years. Maybe the preference for "moons" over "years" was supposed to be a way to avoid making the timeline concrete, because the length of Equestria's lunar cycle is never specified, but nor is that of the solar cycle, so what's the difference? Sometimes I feel like the world-building in this cartoon for little girls about magic horses isn't all that well thought-out.

Yay!

You did a great job portraying and older, wiser Fluttershy that is still just as kind of heart. :fluttershyouch:

And Dash will always be Dash. :rainbowlaugh:

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Since the show at times seemed to suggest that "moons" was something different from "years," I have often assumed "moons" was their version of "months" (seeing that the show seemed to make it a point to avoid using the term "months")...but there are, granted, plenty of instances where that couldn't always explain it either. Not unless Equestria has super long months.

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I have often assumed "moons" was their version of "months"

Absolutely; I take that for granted. The question is just how long a moon is and how many moons there are in a year. At least in principle, a moon could be much longer or shorter than 30 days and there could be many more or fewer moons in a year than 12.

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If we could just figure out how long the "many moons later" was for The Last Problem, we might at least get a rough idea...

It did surprise me that they said "moons" for that when it was quite clearly "years" later. :applejackunsure:

"The most skittish pony you know!?" Fluttershy marched over and delivered a sharp flick to the nose.

To be fair, she kinda is the most skittish pony I know, too...
:flutterrage:: *flick*
Owww, my nose! Okay, I probably derseved that one.

“I’m going to talk to her. Without you in the room.”

Of course Fluttershy can outrank an Grand Marshall simply by being Fluttershy.
And I'm not even sarcastic.
:yay:: "Good, and now sit back into your corner and think about what you had done."
But...
:flutterrage:: "..."
Eeep! Okay!

“And you didn’t dissolve away when I let sunlight in earlier.”
The ghost of Stock Image huffed with indignance. “Even in death, I’m still Celestia’s little pony. Her magic only hurts evil spirits.”

That's actually an good idea for world building.


Good story!
I enjoyed reading it.

And here I was expecting her advice to be to haunt photos.

“Don’t be,” the specter assured, waving a phantom hoof dismissively. “It was my own stupid fault. My father, Grand Marshal Daedalus, shoulda put his hoof down and said no when his Earth Pony daughter begged to be taken to work with him.”

<Insert Steve Rogers/Captain America "I got that reference." meme here...>

As for the resolution: Seems like a post-marking CMC sort of situation. Guess they weren't needed, which says bad things about both Daedalus and Spitfire's problem-solving/leadership abilities...

This is toooo adorable. I love the little world building snippets too, like sunlight only hurting evil spirits, and the importance of burial rituals.

The ghost of Stock Image huffed with indignance. “Even in death, I’m still Celestia’s little pony. Her magic only hurts evil spirits.”

this fits into the show's lore perfectly

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That's about the size of it :rainbowlaugh:

Fluttershy made a sweeping gesture to the glowstones still scattered across the floor. “You can clean up my mess," she suggested. Then her tone hardened.

“While I try to clean up yours.”

but hot dang...someone took their vitamins this morning

I read somewhere somewhat recently that the MLP staff said in an interview that Equestria runs on a completely different set of rules than we do in regards to the "moons" thing. Granted, that could be a fancy way of saying that they didn't want to bother especially since (cough) everyone knows that kids are dumb and won't care about world building or lore (end cough).


Spitfire was a bad officer, she had such potential in her debut, but from what I recall, they basically just decided to turn her into an unlikeable corporate supervisor/drill sergeant mix, like someone who got advanced too quickly so her metaphorical britches didn't have time to catch up.


The little bit we are told about Stock image her dad probably wasn't too keen on having an Earth pony as a daughter, or at least pretended as such because showing affection is a weak, female trait that stallions aren't allowed to have.


My mutterings and conjecture aside, I really enjoyed this story, and the bit with Fluttershy being the uplifter instead of the uplifted was a definite bonus, a very cute and warm fuzzy kind of story. Thank you for writing.

I blame Rainbow Dash‘s acting skills…

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