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My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
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That was a good chapter.
11773617
Thanks.
11802390
Guess I should ask, does Piece of Parchment include spoilers for Fólkvangr?
11802950
If you came to this point, no.
11803109
Alright I'll have to give Piece of Parchment a shot then!
11808231
No prob. I haven't looked at any of the other stories and the description of this one said I didn't need to, but I know that's a tricky audience for an author to write for.
I'm picturing Harmony as equivalent to a computer algorithm (at the very least—although in this story "Harmony" hasn't yet been explained as anything beyond a state of balance between chaos and order, and Gilda probably ought to have been wondering about the jump from that to a force/being that actively creates worlds). I understand pony minds are/were different, and I assume natural predators have a magical instinct not to eat them (though they're never mentioned in this story), and that Harmony's logic just didn't account for free will being able to disregard that (though I'd say that's a bit of a stretch, or at least a confusing thing to not have the characters notice here).
What I don't get is why Harmony's logic would make ponies edible in the first place without some more concrete protection. For their purpose, they might as well have been formless spirits. But they're not. Okay, they must need bodies for some reason. Now they need to eat and breathe, so they're taking in resources from the system and they're officially part of it. From there, what's the point of making them a dead end on the food chain? How long do they naturally live before the bulk of their bodies' nutrients can reenter the ecosystem?
Tough questions that only Harmony might know the answer to, so that's fine. But Luna seems to act like the answer is so obvious the question doesn't matter, and Gilda moves on almost like she already asked and got an answer, but that didn't happen. Even a quick "This is what Harmony thought was going to happen, but this part went wrong" would've settled all of that. Or maybe just an admission from Luna that Harmony couldn't have predicted the effects of free will on the system she built. "It's no one's fault" makes it sound like Harmony saw this coming and couldn't prevent it, and the gods are the ones just reacting to everything without free will.
And Gilda certainly hasn't read the other stories, so all she knows of Celestia so far is that she fought a war against the empire once for some sort of godly dominance over the world and won, that she failed to curb griffon corruption, and that she APPROVES of the Lion becoming king. Yeah the Harpy is hiding from her, but that sounded more like "she'd step in and prevent her from regaining any more strength so this could be resolved peacefully," not "she'd immediately destroy everything you've ever loved and apparently doom her own people to the Windigos just to charge up there and finish her off." I was expecting Gilda to take that as a threat and a declaration of war, coming from Luna, not a petition for help.
11808238
*Shudders* Windigos acting as an "infection" of reality itself makes a scary amount of sense given the real world lore they are based on!
11808314
You're poking (very welcomingly; I don't want to discourage you) into details that I didn't consider important for this story, but that are certainly important to the alternate universe's overarching story. If it was up to me, it would be one single gigantic story with every single detail on it, but that is not feasible.
Gilda isn't wondering. She's simply accepting things. She's accepted a while ago that she doesn't have a choice so any point is moot to her. At best, Luna convinced her that she needs to help her because she doesn't want Celestia to destroy the Harpy.
Natural predators do attack and eat ponies. (You're right. They were neglected in this chapter). The problem is the excess. That is what they avoided and the griffons didn't, because of free will. And ponies are edible because they are one of the incarnations of life. Could they be formless spirits? They could, but then there would be no story. And they are meant to be part of the system, it is the 'ethos' of the ponies. They see themselves as part of the system and the griffons consider themselves above it. Characters just don't know things and the ones that do don't share. That is the province of gods and godhood is hidden behind the veil. Mortals are just underneath this threshold of noticing these things and they are also not prepared to process these things.
Again, Harmony doesn't know things. It just reacts. It wants to remain. Comparing it to a computer system is a good analogy, and one that I use liberally whenever 'the deep magic' is involved. Luna is not going to say that harmony couldn't have known because she knows that Harmony simply doesn't know.
Finally, the pony gods do not possess free-will at this point and the Harpy was too arrogant. Their predominant feelings are fear and sorrow. All they understand is that they need to stop the griffons.
Gilda was written into this story intentionally politically ignorant. She doesn't really understand. She thought 'ponies = good, chancelor = bad' because life sucked, but she had her money and could do the things she liked. Then the northerners started their push and things changed so that all those things she didn't pay attention to hit her in the face and knocked her out of her comfort zone.
The thing is that Gilda doesn't know why Celestia supports the Lion. She barely understands that the prices soared because Queen Novo closed their nautical safe passage and screwed Griffonia's market. What she does understand is that Celestia fought the Harpy and Luna told her that their worldviews are incompatible. Ther her situation is precarious and that if Celestia and the Harpy fight, she will plaster her against the ground, and they need to find a way for them to coexist. During the whole sequence Luna is trying to cause strong emotions in Gilda so that those memories will be imparted on her soul, and will influence Gilda after she erased her memories of the whole thing. Anyway, Luna's speech was supposed to have been nuanced enough to show that Gilda was understanding she was offered a choice to help.
Damn…that was epic. Gory, worrying on many levels, and awe inspiring. Very good chapter
11813471
Yeah. Gilda is entering a bad place.
11813641
ah gotcha. SO ANYWAY when we gonna get gilda godwin snuggles!?
HMMMMM?
11813860
Easy. Easy. Let me set their love nest first.
<wink, wink>
11813878
taps paws. GIB! *makes grabby claws*
One of these days people are going to learn to stop bringing up Gilda's past as a scone selling nobody. Seriously, it never ends well!
Then again, no one save Tempest has survived doing this so that actually makes sense...
*Ahem* Anyway...
Finally got caught up with reading this story, so guess that means I need to get off my butt and finally start reading Piece of Parchment. Wasn't originally leaning towards that but after reading through this "sidestory" I gotta say this is probably the most engrossing AU series I've come across since Fallout Equestria!
As an aside, after looking through a handful of pony related art sites, I can't help but notice a distinct lack of any art depicting Aya Harpyia. Given that she's
almost certainly this setting's BBEGa major character in this setting I'm kiiiiinda sorta hoping I can snag a full color commission slot from Backlash91 once it becomes available. Its mostly a case of figuring out the payment method, and whether both you and he would be okay with this.11818057
I appreciate your kind words. I probably have years worth of ideas to write on this AU with how much stuff there is between the past and the future. I feel like I sold my soul to this thing.
If you want to commision one such image of the Harpy, please, be my guest. I'd love to see Backlash's take on the Allmother.
Just an FYI.
Still planning to snag a commission slot from Backlash91 of The Harpy, assuming you're still okay with this. No luck yet, but evidently he likes to advertise commission slots at the end of the month so now might be a good a time as any to ask if you could give a general description of her appearance that we could pass on to him? I know the Harpy has been described multiple times during the story and is generally based off a harpy eagle. But she's your character so couldn't hurt to give some specifics!
11837428
You don't have to ask. I'd love to see her in lash's style.
This is a harpy eagle, the inspiration for the character.
peregrinefund.org/sites/default/files/styles/raptor_banner_600x430/public/2019-11/raptor-er-harpy-eagle-portrait.jpg?itok=4dTfdFjU
upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3b/Harpia_harpyja_001_800.jpg
i.pinimg.com/736x/1d/1f/b9/1d1fb9fec3939e8797ba9440e2e0a4d2.jpg
avianreport.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/420x420_Daniel-Garcia_optimized.jpg
The thing is that her description has changed a few times along the story, based on the scene or me screwing up. Her 'official' description goes: her fur is white and her hind legs have black tiger stripes. Her chest is fluffy, mostly black, changing into silver to become almost white in her face. Her beak is black and shiny. Her eyes are gray and she is supposed to have a constant, 'you could be doing better' expression. Her fore legs are covered in mostly white feathers and the naked parts are black, with her talons also supposed to be shiny.
With her wings closed, they look black, complementing the 'cowl and cape' appearance when she her has crest lowered. When her wings are open they're supposed to show a striped black and white pattern. Other than her crest (more majestic than the real one), she wears a small diadem made of polished iron.
She's supposed to be larger than most griffons, even Gilad. I never figured out just how larger she is. But the words 'elegant', 'amazonian' and 'graceful' come to mind. I mean, she's the griffon Celestia, but her body build is supposed to be that of a powerful predator like a tiger.
11837455
Okay perfect! I'm also very interested to see what Backlash can do with this character!