20 - Anti-magic human vs Canterlot bureaucracy
The herald trotted brightly up the red carpet and into the throne room. Bowing to the princess, he telekinetically lifted a scroll from his pack and unfurled it to read.
"Petitioner #27 to the Court of the Sun, announcing...uhh, there's no name listed. It just says...mwahaha?"
"That's pronounced, 'Mwahahaha!'" the human twirled his mustache, sneering at the herald as his anti-magic physics bubble caused the scroll to fall to the ground as he walked past.
Celestia watched with interest as the human marched towards her throne. It was always nice when the otherwise dreary and predictable humdrum of the court was interrupted by something unusual. It had been at least a few months since an aspiring new villain had been the source of such an interruption, and she was curious to hear this one's pitch.
"Princess Celestia!" he bellowed. "I am a human, and I am immune to magic! Therefore you are helpless before me and I demand that you surrender of all of Equestria into my care!"
Oh. That was a bit of a disappointment. She'd heard that one before seventeen times in her thousands of years. Eighteen if you counted Fluffy Biscuit 'the horrible' who had found that one artifact, even though it hadn't actually granted her magic immunity. Of course, Fluffy hadn't realized that at the time she'd issued her leadership challenge, not that Celestia had bothered to tell her that the item in question was actually just a spell focus to help manage surplus magic from unwanted estrus cycles.
Celestia smiled fondly at her memory of their final battle, the chase up in the rafters, the blindfolded sword fight, the exploding alchemy lab in the south tower...good times. Pity the stained glass window commemorating the event hadn't survived through the 500s.
"I said," the human shouted again with a bit more volume, "I am immune to magic! Surrender Equestria or feel my wrath!"
The princess glanced over at her guards. They were excellent at remaining standing while sleeping, but she could always tell. Well, no sense waking them. Turning to the right of her throne, she spoke to her aide.
"Raven," the princess intoned calmly. "Is that timeshare in the Bahamares still available?"
"I believe so," Miss Inkwell nodded, flipping through her notes. "Starting this Friday, and until the following weekend. Shall I have it booked for you?"
"Please do," she nodded, removing her crown and peytral, then teleporting them up to her bedroom.
Regally, the now unencumbered princess stepped off her throne, reared up onto her hind legs and dramatically covered her forehead with the back of one hoof.
"Oh, alas!" she cried, giving a good impression of a bad Shakespearian actor. "Alack! What could a mere pony such as I possibly do to overcome such a clearly overpowered ability as an anti-magic bubble! A bubble of such raw strength, such unseemly power, that no pony alive has seen the likes of it since at least their first few undergraduate classes at my school for gifted unicorns! Oh, the horror!"
"Booyah!" the human cheered, giving a fist bump to the sky. "Finally a pony who gets it!"
"Oh, woe is me!" she continued, taking another step towards him, then dramatically tossing her mane in a tragic display of helplessness. "Oh, calamity of misfortune! What travesty it is that I, merely a timeless immortal, with mere millenia of experience protecting Equestria from chaos gods and the demons of Tartarus alike, must do battle with such a powerful foe as an ordinary human!"
"Hey, I'm no ordinary human," he objected, pausing his victory dance just long enough to grumble. "But yeah, that part about the calamity and misfortune sounds about right."
"Oh, alas!" Celestia continued, taking yet another step closer. "Oh, how callous is fate to pit me against such a dreadful thing...I, mere alicorn, burdened with such useless abilities as dematerializing and reconstituting my own body, battlefield removal, extreme long range teleportation, casual nuke-tanking level durability, and before the post-Lauren Faust retcons started happening, substantial thematic metaphor suggesting that I'm a nigh-omniscient, hyperdimensional Sun Goddess operating independently of a physical body that I wear merely as an avatar, while I myself am not fully tethered to time and space-"
"Wait, hold on!" the human interrupted. "When have you done any of those things? And no, the comic books don't count. I'm pretty sure you just sit around the palace eating cake all day. It's always Twilight who saves Equestria or fights anything. What is this 'not tethered to time and space' nonsense? When have you ever 'operated independently' of your body?"
"Do you remember when Twilight ascended?" Celestia replied calmly.
"Yeah, of course."
"Do you remember the scene where we walked through a starry background, watching scenes from the entirety of Twilight's life?"
"Yeah?"
"Where did that happen?"
"Uhhh..." the human thought about it. "Dream sequence?"
"And where," the princess prompted, "were our bodies when we were 'dreaming' this?"
"I don't know," the human shrugged. "Twilight blew herself up and then somehow ended up in the sky. But that doesn't mean anything for you. Maybe she was disembodied for her ascension, but you could have been projecting into her mind while munching cake in Canterlot for all I know. That's remote viewing or telepathy at best. When have you personally ever 'rematerialized' a body or done anything without one?"
"Season 1, episode 2, Friendship is Magic part 2," Celestia recited, her starry mane billowing silently. "After Nightmare Moon was defeated and Twilight's friends settled in with their new jewelry."
"I don't remember that."
"Applejack 'reckoned' that they really do represent the Elements, to which I replied that 'indeed they do.'"
"So?"
"I wasn't in the room at the time,"
"So what?" the human repeated. "Any stage ventriloquist can project their voice."
"And then a ball of light flew from beyond the horizon, like the light of dawn."
"Just symbolic nonsense because of your cutie mark."
"And then only after entering the room did the ball of light become a pony body for me to wear."
"Just the animators being lazy."
"While a choir of angels sang in the background."
"Yeah, yeah," the human dismissively waved his hand. "I don't remember that scene, and it's all just symbolic nonsense anyway. Alicorns obviously aren't hyperdimensional energy beings or something. It's not like you can just dematerialize and rematerialize a body whenever you want. And even if you could, it would just be magic, and I can turn that off."
"Even though Luna does it casually and routinely, and her horn doesn't glow when she does."
"Whatever," the human rolled his eyes. "Go ahead and dematerialize your body if you can, and I'll just conquer Equestria while you're off watching as a useless ball of light somewhere."
The princess's mouth slowly grew into a grin, and she threw back her mane and resumed her lamenting.
"Oh dear!" she cried aloud, rearing up again to clutch one hoof to a breast and one to the sky...then taking yet another step closer to the human. "How fickle is fate, to pit such a clever antagonist against Equestria! Surely there can be no outwitting such a tactical genius, able to see how clearly useless such abilities would be! If only I were powerful enough to overcome his anti-magic barrier through sheer magnitude of strength! But alas, a mere alicorn such as myself, able to telekinetically accelerate objects in the octillion ton range to double digit multiples of c, with requisite secondary powers that imply both casual violation of the speed of light-"
"Wait, wait...stop!" the human facepalmed. "I already know where you're going with this, and no. Just no. You can move the sun because of your cutie mark, and that's it. Nothing else."
"Even though it's canon that teams of unicorns were able to do the same without a sun cutie mark."
"Yes, exactly!" the human gleefully pointed his finger. "Any pony can do it! So clearly it's just magic and I'm immune to that."
Again the princess grinned, now with a nearly predatory look in her eyes, as she took yet another step closer, before throwing her head back and lamenting again.
"Oh, how terrible!" she cried. "What horrible travesty it is that I, a mere alicorn, blessed with the attributes of all three pony races, have not the sheer strength to effortlessly overpower you, nor the speed to remove you from my chamber before you can blink, nor a horn sufficiently pointy to gore you upon, nor the-"
"Sheer mass to crush me from eating all that cake?"
Celestia paused her monologue to look down at the human.
Slowly, deliberately, taking one last, final step closer...she lowered her head to bring it level with his, then turned a single eye to bear, mere inches from his. Close enough that her pastel mane, billlowing freely in the invisible solar wind, crossed the threshold into his physics bubble.
It did not turn pink.
"But no!" she cried out, backing away and spreading her wings. "There is but one suitable option available to me, to retreat! To flee, to turn tail and run like the wind! Perhaps someday, as ruler in exile, I might yet forge an army from among the non-magical races to reclaim my throne. But that day is not today. Care well for Equestria in my absence, mighty human, for some day when I return there may yet be a reckoning!"
And with that, the princess pushed off the ground with a single flap, then teleported away, the only sound left being the light snoring of a guard.
And a few crickets.
"Wait," the human frowned at the near-silence. "Did I actually win this time?"
"Indeed you have," Raven trotted over to her new liege. "And as new ruler of Equestria, I will be your assistant to help you properly manage affairs of state. To begin with, there are currently fourteen new tax policy proposals under discussion, as well as forty five public construction projects needing review in eight different jurisidictions, each with their own unique licensing requirements."
The human opened his mouth to speak, but Raven continued uninterrupted.
"Next, we have twenty-two petitions for redress of greivances, three ribbon-cutting ceremonies to attend, a floodgate planning committee meeting you're already late for, an orphanage in Manehatten that needs..."
~~~~
The following week, Princess Celestia returned from her Bahamares vacation feeling well rested. Her first act upon her return, to send an exhausted human back to Earth via a magic portal to get some much-needed sleep.
Maybe he was immune to teleportation, but clearly he wasn't immune to portals. After all, if his physics bubble prevented him from going through portals, then how had he arrived in Equestria in the first place?
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I just remembered that Celestia is the kind of troll who would invite this guy to the Grand Galloping Gala just to ruin the party and take the rest of the night off...
10353744
Gotcha!
Like I pointed out in the author's comment for the Rarity chapter, the later-season writers really didn't understand some of the characters very well. As for Celestia, her role as a benevolent, but playful bordering-on-trickster goddess was a pretty common understanding of her character back in 2012, and there are a lot of clues in the first few seasons that she was. But like Rarity, she was heavily retconned in later seasons.
Fun fact: I actually asked one of the writers about it at a Comic Con panel quite a few years back. She told me that she didn't like writing for omnipotent characters, because they were "boring." There's probably a video of it on youtube somewhere.
10353800
Even if she was omnipotent, her need to completely troll a situation while looking completely innocent of her doing it makes her anything but boring.
10353812
Try watching the original season 2 Discord episodes...with the view that Discord isn't actually a villain, but rather that he's cooperating with Celestia to test her pupil. It explains a lot that happens in those episodes.
For example, notice that after he's "released" he goes straight to Ponyvile, where Twilight lives. So Ponyville ends up "engulfed in chaos!" and then when Twilight and company go to Canterlot...the skies are completely clear. Allegedly Discord was trapped in stone by Celestia, but rather than go after her, he completely ignores Celestia, and ignores Canterlot, and instead goes to Ponyville...a town that hadn't even existed until ~900 years after his stoning, because why?
Or, notice that while Discord corrupts Twilight's friends, he leaves Twilight herself absolutely alone so that she can solve the problem on her own. Discord never corrupts Twilight. She does it to herself, and the moment she does, Discord shows up to try to snap her out of it so she can get back to fighting him like she's supposed to. There's this moment where she's all grey, and he can't cheer her up and he gives her this worried look as if he's realized that he's gone too far. Before he gets back into chracter and laughs maniacally...and then immediately runs back to Celestia off-screen...who then sends the friendship letters to snap her out of it.
He spends a lot of those episodes going back and forth between being a scary-but-harmless trickster, and outright helping the ponies to overcome the problems he's making for them. Think about all the time and effort he spends helping Twilight. He "hides" the elements in her house. When Twilight forgets the specifics of what she's supposed to do, he takes her back in time to remind her. And speaking of that time travel bit, the moment they arrive in the past, Pinkie Pie is distracted by their arrival, looks at them showing up, and then says nothing and looks forward again.
Given Celestia's fondness of chaos herself, the Gala, the "gotcha" with the teacup...it's a little odd to think of Discord as being an adversary to her. And in those episodes, he never does anything to Celestia herself, and never does anything inconvenient or disruptive in Canterlot. Everything that he does is all about Twilight, or to Ponyville, where Twilight lives.
I’d call bull, but effectively instantaneous time travel happens often enough that it’s probably true.
Really an anti magic bubble should be causing the world around mister human to disintegrate as it comes in contact with fundamentally different physical laws, thus killing the human via the energy release.
This is the type of work that deserves to be downloaded.
Thank you for your effort, and for sharing it with us for our enjoyment.
10353863
Season 9, he outright admits that was his intent all along. No argument from me.
This is just so hilarious and strangely thought out. Please make more if you can
10357442
It would be possible to turn this into a "Fluttershy Wants In Your Pants" sort of story and run with it forever. But I'm not sure I could keep it funny forever. Isn't it better to end on a high note, rather than continue churning out more chapters until it's boring?
...now, a sequel maybe...I'll consider it.
10360353
I was thinking something of the opposite, like a pony or random amount of ponys go to earth with their own physics bubble. But it's your story, it's still great even if it doesn't continue.
10361118
That's still a localized area along side a fuel source. By your explanation, as soon as magic hits the bubble, it does become a thing. It becomes electrons/photons. Those are objects. Humans think in "things", because most if not everything is a thing.
Now, this is a much larger area. I don't know the exact math so forgive my ignorance here, but I know there's an exponent somewhere in there, which means the energy required to do this quickly increases.
The question then becomes, is she applying force to the Ursa major and water tower? Or is she changing the laws of physics around the bear and then moving said bubble around? If we're talking forces like that, then the same thing would result. Flash fires everywhere as energy is pumped directly into the air, ripping the electrons from it and forcing it into a plasma state.
Plus, in your reply, you said they were "flows". Let's look at flows and fields for a second. When a lack of flow hits a flow, it turns into a flow. Take a magnet and a non magnetic material. Just because you stick the magnet onto a rock, doesn't mean the magnet stops working through the rock, and that doesn't mean the rock becomes a conduit for the magnet. The flow passes through the rock, not effecting it, and the rock doesn't effect it in return. All that's left is does it have the original power to make it across the space the rock now inhabits to effect something on the other side. It's why compasses don't just stop working inside of buildings.
Taking all of this into account, one option is that magic just splashes around the bubble, unable to pass through into a universe that can't accept it. Two is that the energy passes through but takes the same amount of energy to flash heat the area on fire, insulation not withstanding since twilight in her hubris didn't insulate the area. Or three passes through the bubble to the other side with no decernable effect on the being inside it, treating the area like a void in space.
10388065
There was change, but not a "massive" or "drastic" one - just a gradual shift as older writers and staff - like Lauren - left and new ones who weren't very familiar with the older stories were hired. Basically, a decompressed version of your theory that reached completion around Season 5.
Quite frankly, I think the show was never that great in consistency in the first place - it's just more noticeable as more episodes are added. But if you want a Season 1 example... if Rainbow had a whole day out with the Wonderbolts, why does she act like she's meeting them for the first time at the Gala?
10388081
Production order doesn't match broadcast order. This is common in syndicated television shows. The production team produces episodes, but the network decides which order to air them in, and they routinely bump up episodes that they think well "sell better" or to make them line up better with holidays and so forth.
Star Trek, Firefly, Futuruma, Babylon 5...lots of shows have suffered from this.
Very different from totally retconning character personalities and backgrounds.
10388789
I hadn't considered that possibilty - it's probably checkable. I'll look into it tomorrow.
But there are still little bits of irregularity in the early show, which with time and writer drift grow into larger and larger differences.
That's probably intended to be "retcons". Although as is it may be funnier.
Delightful deconstruction of the trope. Each one was a joy to read, especially this last one. Thank you for the anthology.
11205485
This was.
Two years ago. You think I remember what I was thinking when I wrote that comment?
disclaimer: i know this is a comedy fic, this isnt directed to this author specifically, i'm just venting out loud about my biggest writing peeve.
I'd rather read a "dood antimagic human" fic than anything written around this obnoxious powerscaling / undefined magic wank. Omnipotent characters, nuke powers and magic that can do whatever the author thinks is "clever" ruin every story they are in. "dood what if twiglet just threw a rock with her supermagic look at this math i did of the bear episode its CANON" "dude if celestia moves the sun it means she literally has the power to move a bajillion gajillion everythings per shartosecond look at my algebra" dood what if you wrote a balanced magic/power system that doesnt invalidate all tension and creativity and challenge that characters could face. what if you accepted that the show was not made to stand up to aspergers-tier scrutiny and in order to write good fiction you have to ignore some of the more literal details and tweak things. what if you didn't push every non-wizard aside like all the side-characters in a bad (every) shonen anime. the moment a character has the ability to make something happen far away without physical causality a million avenues for overpoweredness open up to anyone with slight imagination, this isnt new, it isnt impressive and you didnt even need the numberwang scaling to make it happen. i just recently got a recommendation from the chan about a highly-rated adventure fic, and dropped it a few chapters in because the author simply cannot stop jerking off twilight's magic and copping out of all threats with it, it sucks.
11373070
I'm not sure you understood the intent of this story. This isn't a powerwank. It's a deconstruction of the antimagic trope. That is, it's an attempt to take antimagic as it's used in fimfiction stories, and to (humorously) demonstrate why it's a weak story-telling device.
Omnipotent characters can be made to work, but they require competent writing. Look at Q from Star Trek the Next Generation. He's one of the most beloved characters in the franchise. But he's not written as a power fantasy. He's written as an out-of-context obstacle, nearly a force of nature, that must be reasoned and bargained with rather than defeated.
But I'm not sure why you're trying to make this point. This story doesn't use "omnipotent nuke powers" at all. Luna "defeats" the human by wanting to be his friend and talking to him, not by dropping the moon on him. Fluttershy doesn't overpower him with The Stare, she has friends who make him back off and she gives him a hug. Pinke could have pulled out her presumably technological--not-magic party cannon and blown him to pieces, but instead she hooked him up with delicious cupakes and sexy ponies until he lost interest in fighting.
This story isn't about "omnipotent nuke powers" at all.
But notice that she doesn't? Yes, the final chapter makes it very clear that she hopelessly outclasses him and could defeat him in any of a number of ways, but then she doesn't do any of them. How much less satisfying would this story have been, if Celestia had telekinetically picked him up in and crushed him to a goo splatter on the floor? But no, she doesn't defeat him at all. Instead she lets him have his way, but wins anyway.
This is, if you'll forgive my horn-tooting, clever writing. Something that antimagic fics tend to desperately lack. Antimagic as it is used on fimfiction is in the first case generally a gimmick to make up for a writer's inability to craft a plausible flow of events that allows a human to be relevant at all. A "real life" human trying to fight the powers that be in the MLP-verse would be about as helpless as Applejack fighting a real-world infantry division. There's just no way. Imagine if somebody wrote a story about Applejack vs the US marines and decided to have Applejack be immune to bullets. You wouldn't take that seriously. Why do people buy into this "oh, well humans are immune to magic!" nonsense. It's the same thing. And yet as a trope, it's used so often that it's somehow taken on some sort of air of credibility for some people. It's ok to write silly stories. It's ok to use tropes. Tropes are not bad. But if you want to write a good story, it's helpful to understand the tropes being used, and I think the average antimagic fic writer doesn't really understand what they're doing.
Power Fantasy is...a valid thing to write a story about. It's not exactly highbrow, but you can make a power fantasy that's still a good story. And if your goal is to write a power fantasy involving ponies, it's obviously a big problem to be an ordinary human in a world where every third character can fly, and every third can use magic, and even the "weak" earth ponies can shrug off boulders landing on their head.
A clever writer will find a way for it to make sense. A solution that retains a respectable sense of reality for how both sides operate, and that gives a plausible path to victory. Maybe the human will take their knowledge of steel-making to the griffons and forge an army of fliers wearing armor harder than otherwise exists in the verse. Maybe they enter into politics and introduce the concept of democracy, rallying the ponies in revolution against the monarchy. There are plausible ways for a human to defeat ponies.
A poor writer will simply shrug and say "human immune to magic neener neener neener my daddy can beat up your daddy!"
This fic isn't saying "bwahahah, look at the powerful ponies beat up the pony human!" it's saying, "guys, this antimagic thing is a weak storytelling device. Let's all have a laugh at it, and please stop using it as a story device."
11374981
Yeah, sorry about that. As the disclaimer and wording insufficiently imply, i don't have hostile intentions towards this story, i was just venting inappropriately about something i hate, on the field that was in front of me at the time, as it has been bugging me particularly recently, and the magic-related chapters in this were just the wafer-thin mint that made me Mr. Creosote all over your floor. Sorry again, it's a pretty nice floor overall.
And i don't like the whole "antimagic human lol" plot device either, op magic is just more annoying because of its ubiquity. I've never encountered the antimagic thing in a fic i wasn't already expecting to be suck, but deus ex magica can just show up in any fic at any time, probably because the show itself doesn't bother imposing any limitation on magic either.
(Except for that one rarity episode where twilight and zecora state that magic cannot, under any circumstances, be used to repair or grow hair. Truly a devastating weakness.)