A long forgotten element has been brought back, but for better or for worse?
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My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
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I didn't expect to see Cynder and Malefor from The Legend of Spyro Series in this chapter. Nice.
Also, after reading this entire story, I see Jame and Spyro (The Legend of Spyro) are almost the same. They are both calm, kind, and determined. I am not surprised that when I read Jame’s lines, I hear Spyro’s voice. I don’t know. That is my view.
Man, I forgot how much I missed these segments!
Thank you for putting Cynder in this, if only for a single chapter. The Spyro games were my childhood (not counting Skylanders, that game is a disgrace to the series in my eyes and always will be) and Cynder holds a special place for me. She is best dragoness. She indeed would fit into the world of Equestria pretty well, shame she only exists in a dream as of now.
I love this chapter. I'm curious on what other crossover villains James and the sisters will fight in the future. Part of me is assuming that they might encounter either Dio Brando or the Pillarmen from JoJo.
Also it's good to see James hanging with the Royal sisters in his dreams again.
11140685
Except that’s not at all what people associate Spyro’s personality with. LoS Spyro was easily the blandest Spyro of his incarnations as he was far too interchangeable with too many young boyish high fantasy protagonists that was endemic of the time. Everyone wanted to cash in on Lord of the Rings and LoS went so far as to have Spyro voiced by Frodo. LoS was a product of its time.
I don’t see the comparison between LoS Spyro and James.
11141339
I mean that is fine. Everyone has different views after all. I have mine, and you have yours. I still respect them nonetheless.
how is it my gut is saying that discord even though he is dead is going to do something to bring her into james's world?
11141136
I wouldn’t count on that.
1. The time the pillarmen and dio from the 2015 remake is years ahead of the time right now here
And 2. James here doesn’t seem to watch a lot of anime as Jojo is an acquired taste to some
11142857
That didn't stop him from meeting UNDERTALE in the Power Ponies comic and Undertale was released in 2015.
11141714
What are you talking about?
11141339
The only comparison they both have is that they also have a dark side. Spyro couldn't control himself because he was exposed by too much dark magic in Eternal Night and James went berserk mode on Discord and killed him. That's the only one I can think of.
James's obsession with dragonesses has now grown to the point that he's dreaming of them, haha.
Really though, that battle was a real spectacle. That finale was straight up nuts. I also hope we'll see Cynder again in some form one day.
11142864
Why do you suppose James had no idea who the Undertale crew are?
11142864
As he pointed it out: "why do you supposed he has no idea who the UNDERTALE crew are?"
Just because it came out in 2015, does NOT equal to him getting instant-knowledge of what has happened in Earth in Equestria. Plus only a couple or so years passed when he went to Equestria so if you take the time he was sent there and put it in real world time: it's almost 2015 in the current story but it doesn't mean any outside sources could inspire some events.
I hate to be that guy, but blue whales very rarely breach, and when they do they don't go very high. They're just too heavy, and from what you wrote this one's much larger than they naturally get so... That aside, another fantastic chapter. I'm loving this story so far, can't wait to see what you do with it.
11164751
Of course it’s not meant to be taken literally. It’s a dream sequence akin to what you might see out of Fantasia. The concepts of reality are a foreign concept at the time.
11164834
That's just a curse of knowledge. If you know how something works than you feel the need to point out inaccurate depictions. Or maybe that's just me. But going by dream logic a giant whale breaching is pretty tame.
11176938
Yes, I agree. I remember one fanfic that was released a year or two after your story’s first chapter, and the main human character was ridiculed for being “misanthropic.” When all he did was state humanity’s violence in history neutrally. Like he didn't say it with hate, malice, or the way James here does when he compares Equestria with Earth. I find it ridiculous that people at that time wrongfully judged the human character for that.
Six volumes?! That's incredible, dude! Can't wait to see what these last six volumes have in store.
11177376
I admit there was more vitriol than was warranted at the time. Though keep in mind this was 10 years ago when I was a much more idealistic man with more hope for the world. Since then, my bitterness has been replaced with jaded cynicism.
With that said, even with the benefit of hindsight, I really can't say what exactly resulted in the "criticism of humanity = misanthropy" dogma that was everywhere in the fandom back in the day. I was there since early 2011 and I still have no idea what resulted in such discussions being so universally hated by so many.
At the very least, I do have a couple of guesses over what may have contributed to it. The first would be how Equestria itself was presented early on. An idealistic peaceful inviting and most importantly believable world that was a far better place to live than the world we live in. (At least before the world started to become less consistent and more chaotic starting with Season 3) The superiority of Equestria as a world to live in at least in terms of peacefulness and ideologies most definitely resulted in many Bronies viewing Earth's worldwide societal issues with increased scrutiny. I certainly did at one time. My guess is that such complaints became so common in fanfics and were not implemented with the most tact at the time that most audiences just got sick of it. Even if the criticisms were warranted at times, too many members on this site were too eager to demonize anyone who brought up unfortunate real world subject matter like it was a modern internet witch hunt. (This guy in particular being the most prominent example in my memory who tried to be a thorn in my side over this topic and he has yet to apologize for it.)
The other possible catalyst for this mindset spreading like wildfire in the fandom was the proliferation of the Conversion Bureau subgenre pretty early on. The original author of the story that started the whole thing unwittingly included content that ended up carrying horrible unfortunate implications that bordered on misanthropic. To his credit, this was a result of him just be inexperienced in writing rather than being genuinely malicious and he never intended for such messages to end up in his work. But where the misanthropic implications in his creations before abandoning the series was a result of incompetence, the person who inherited the Conversion Bureau series and made it their magnum opus, Chatoyance, is a genuine and shameless misanthrope and misandrist who is not shy about pushing her pony supremacist ideology to the point where the Conversion Bureau series has become the poster child of misanthropic wish fulfillment in the fandom. People generally don't like this series and it likely played a hand in the fandom developing such a hair trigger for even generally justified criticism of the failings of Earth's human population.
There's no way of knowing if there is a definitive reason over why the fandom was so hostile to these kinds of topics in fanfics years ago. Goodness knows I have dealt with my share of actual shameless misanthropes on the site. But on top of this mindset having largely died out by this point, these accusations of misanthropy in response to genuine criticisms of this world have likely in part aged poorly due to the world of today being significantly worse off than it was in 2010. A case of being vindicated by history.
What's really unfortunate about my case is that this "criticism = misanthropy" dogma undermined reception of my own story and impacted the voting ratio of The Lost Element. Most of the people who left negative votes on my story back then have either forgotten that my works even exist or abandoned the site and moved on with their lives, resulting in the positive to negative ratio dubious at best due to the petty criteria over why they would leave negative marks on it. I have to wonder what the ratio would be today if they read and voted on the story in 2021 instead of 2011.
Whatever the case, I'm glad that era of the fandom has died and no one is in a hurry to dig it back up again.
11177502
From my experience, that's kind of just how countercultures work. They usually seem to go something like this:
1. A group is overrun with a particular set of ideas, in this case misanthropy in the Brony community's early days, likely brought over as you identified thanks to being presented a world largely free of genuine conflict and strife, a natural magnet for depressed lowlifes everywhere.
2. A group opposed to those ideas forms in reaction, in this case those generally positive about humanity (pro-anthropes?) tired of reading endless stories about how we're all irredeemably awful and are better off dead or enslaved by ponies. Arguments begin to break out between the two emerging sides.
3. Elements in both sides begin to radicalize themselves against each other, everyone is either in full agreement or "the enemy" and people with any kind of middle position are caught in the crossfire between the extremists, in this case those radicalized against the misanthropes in the fandom didn't like you very much.
4. At this point things can either continue to escalate to a full-scale culture war (or even an actual war), or things can cool down and people eventually kind of just move on. Some of the radicals remain, but there's not enough of them to matter much. If that happens, nuance is finally allowed to return. Luckily, the latter happened here.
How old, or very young, is the main character supposed to be?
Im really having trouble placing him. He acts very much like I would expect a child to, so Im thinking very young teen?
Monk
11183494
If you really believe the protagonist has the mindset of a child, I will leave it up to your imagination.
11183545
I just meant that if you ever edit or update the fic, you should list an age to help the reader nail it down. Chapter 1 makes it very hard to place him.
11183579
25 at the start.
11140879
In that case, the newest chapter has a very pleasant surprise for you.
Another one bites the dust (pun intended ).
Well, this was quite the interesting read. What an encounter, what a fight and what a dream.
If you have as little familiarity with the world of "Spyro the Dragon" as you imply that you do, you really pulled some amazing stuff off with Cynder and Malefor. In all fairness, I know bearly anything about the franchise myself.
Cynder's situation mirroring Nightmare Moon's is rather interesting. Then again, it's not unheard of for such fictional characters to be corrupted by dark magic. It seems that we have also discovered a new power that the Princess of Dreams possesses. I can only imagine what use that could make in the future.
The Royal Sisters anger towards their nightly foe is definitely feelings of past enemies, Discord possibly being one of them. I can see a similarity in the way he used his inexplainable insight to manipulate his offenders.
I never would've imagined that a part of James' armor, separated and liquified, would form mild protection for another, as small as it was. That was a nice touch.
Still, a part of me hopes that James and the others will have an easier time facing the Forgotten Emperor and his forces. That battle was so intense, I half-expected James to just wake up from it.
I wouldn't be surprised if you really went all out with your creative energy while writing this chapter. Several major moments seemed to remind me of something I've seen before. This was really a trip down Memory Lane for me. Freeing Cynder from the Dark Master's powers was like seeing the Mane Six going up against Nightmare Moon in 'Friendship is Magic - Part 2.' The raging battle with Malefor inside the crumbling temple felt like the earthquake scene from "The Land Before Time" mixed with the Cave of Wonders' destruction from "Aladdin." As for the final moments of the battle, it was like Prince Phillip battling Maleficent from "Sleeping Beauty" mixed with Prince Eric destroying Ursula from "The Little Mermaid" (in more ways than one).
Regarding that last one, when Malefor had his jaws around Cynder, I half-expected him to swallow her but then be tortured by the armor's power from the inside, similar to how Crysta and the other fairies re-trapped Hexxus in "FernGully: The Last Rainforest."
Even the end of the dream felt familiar. It was like the Moors from "Maleficent" crossed with the Mushroom Forest from "The Little Engine that Could" and the spirit of "Alice in Wonderland" (be it the first adaption or the second). The moment when the whale leaped out of the ocean and splashed back in felt like a part of 'Tracy's Fantastic Journey' from "Jay Jay the Jet Plane" mixed with a similar part from the musical scene in "The Snowman." As for the space flight, it reminded me of certain space scenes from Seasons 2(13:08) and 3(21:39) of "Blue's Clues" mixed with a certain "Casper the Friendly Ghost" cartoon and the journey to Neverland in "Peter Pan."
That dream ending with Cynder was very sweet. Running and then flying together; it felt like that moment James and Queen Novo shared on Capricorn Island.
As for Cynder's last words....
I get the impression that those words have a lot of weight to them. She has said that more than once. Also, it was yet another moment of familiarity.
What awaits everyone in the waking world next? I shall read on and find out.