Only a few days have passed since magic's restoration and when it comes to the little things, Pipp is still trying to adjust. Minor details like 'all of Zephyr Heights still knows I couldn't really fly' and 'I went outside and the dirt got me.' The royal family's reputation still needs a touch of repair, and that's why her mother is considering whether to send the siblings away for a while. Just until the gossip cools down.
Zipp wants to go investigate the new. Pipp would like to have her status quo back, thank you very much. So they can really fly now? Why does that mean things have to change?
...and maybe she can also make... lightning? Electricity? As in 'that stuff which keeps my phone, and therefore me, alive'?
The new might have possibilities. Which includes an increased chance of exile.
(Now with author Patreon and Ko-Fi pages.)
The zombie that just broke out of her grave to find you because you said that, Pipp
How long before "We All Murder Pipp Petals"
Those poor guards...
Some crave freedom. Some crave the
cagestage.Agoraphobic Pipp. Unexpected, but makes sense.
The last words of so many pegasi. "Hey, everypony! Watch this!"
(And Pip really shouldn't dis her great-great-grandparent, because clueless confidence like this has to be inherited from Rainbow Dash, after all.)
Personally, I don't know if I would've leaned in quite this heavily on spinning Pipp as so...how do I want to say this...stereotypically royal as you have here, Estee, seeing there's plenty of reason from the G5 lore to assume Pipp knew more about the world beyond the palace than she's gotten credit for here...but at the same time, I can see how it plays in so critically for the plot here, and as it's all to set her up so to learn otherwise in the near future...I can't deny it still works.
And, admittedly, the idea that Pipp approaches her problem solving in a rather Rainbow Dash-esque sort of manner fits much better than I would've thought. Too bad Pipp couldn't once do the poor mare the decency of actually getting her name right!
The best part for me though was Haven handling the aftermath at the end, because it really shows Haven as the caring mother she really is for her daughters at the end of the day.
Oh boy, Rainbow is rolling around in her grave so fast she could power the whole Pegasus electric network.
Seeing the sisters adapt to the outside world Estee style is going to be fun.
That was a nice one, the three tribes relearning the knowledge that was lost and relearning to live together again is a nice premise but I think it's going to be the stories about the main cast living together and getting on each other nerves that's going to be the better ones. Nothing like collocation stories to get to want kill someone.
Your summary for this story was sick. I especially loved the line and the dirt got me!
Your stories are slowly getting me to like gen 5. (Just like with gen 4...you cool.)
Rainbow's greatest fear was to be forgotten .. and it happened.
The tribes separated, magic went away, everything Celestia, Cadance, and the Mane6 struggled for failed ... G5 is an ugly place.
This is how Misty got away with it for as long as she did.
The fact that a sonic boom didn't obliterate the entire airship bay at that moment proves there's no such thing as ghosts in this world. Or at least that they can't affect the world of the living. At least somepony remembers Dash, and I'm sure Sunny will work to spread that knowledge.
Oh, but of course Vinyl lives on Pipp's mind. Though there's the question of whether Pegapedia quietly edited her tribe in the meantime...
I'm not sure what I like more, the eternal march of electrical standards or Pipp naming her phone "Bestie."
Interesting that even the concept of cloud cities has been forgotten... but it does make sense. Yes, it wouldn't be a option for most of the populace, but somepony might wonder why the royals didn't have a summer palace at five thousand feet.
Ouch. Also, love seeing the germ of the idea that would lead to Mane Melody.
There was something reminiscent of changelings in the royals of that era, and for good reason.
A commonality I hadn't really thought about until now. All of the main cast for this generation started it at least a little removed from most ponies, whether as authority figures or outcasts.
In a sense, they are all the same phone, even though every part has been replaced multiple times. Call it the Pipp of Theseus.
Flitter nods approvingly from the grave. (Honestly, Flitter might well be the princesses' many-times-great-grandmother. Though given the uncertain time differential involved, most of Equestria as we knew it could be.)
Respect. Though that's a hefty password for a phone. I just have a six-digit code.
It's a good filter, yes. I wonder how much of that was intentional.
The question is whether any electrical discharge can fall under that threshold, but they'll cross that bridge when they come to it.
Lovely extra touch. Throw in some G5 5G with your magic.
Great blend of hilarity and melancholy. It can be terrifying to stand at the threshold, moving from a comfortable rut to an uncertain future. But electrical fires are not a healthy way to cope with that. (Also, I have to wonder how much time it will take for pegasi to realize they have special eyes. It'll likely take some time with weather work to notice the charges and heat shifts. Certainly not the sort of thing one might notice in a palace.) Thank you for a most enjoyable read.
An interesting look at a very sheltered little pony.
The palace is more of a golden cage to Pipp than she's ever realized. No wonder Zipp does her best to break free!
I kept getting the vibes that Pipp was a descendant of Rainbow Dash because I could see Dash making those same leaps in logic. Pipp was far too sheltered and much like Twilight she will definitely be coming out of her shell if you continue more stories in G5.
"keeps my phone alive" reminds me of this silly video:
i also tried to look up the scene where Pipp's wire harness went haywire, and found this:
MYM Pipp - Teehee, streaming, singing, hairstyling, girlboss!
Estee Pipp - Spoiled, out of touch, agrophobic mess of self contradictions.
Huzzah!
For a social influencer this seems like a huge lack of empathy... or am I misreading it?
It had occurred to me previously to wonder if she would ruin many cell-phones learning how to get the voltage (and amperage?) correct, Her not understanding how money works, and the scene with the cabinet full of phones and tossing the uncharged one in the post above this one makes me think a pile of progressively less scorched phones is very likely. I also wonder if, in the end, Zipp will have to demonstrate the technique since they only have a few hours, and Zipp might have put in a few hours prior to this making progress towards activating lightning. Might have to just use it in weapon mode and have Pipp artfully fail to mention that R&D on the whole "Charge a Cellphone" application is still... well "in its infancy" might be putting it to mildly... more like "has not fully implanted in the uterine wall'.
I also see the general tone of your stories did not change much from G4 to G5. Which is perfectly appropriate.
(More comments to be edited in as I continue reading probably).
11614699
Pipp's not lacking in empathy, exactly. Rather, she's been raised in an incredibly limited environment, where just about the only ponies she can truly interact with are Zipp and their mom. I expect she'll expand her horizons fast once she's in Maretime Bay and constantly encountering regular ponies.
Okay, so I have a theory: In the Continuum, G5 is the product of Tirek's third rampage in the Triptych timeline. In the Anchor Foal timeline, Tirek's second rampage was thwarted by Discord and his third was halted before it could begin by Cerea. But while it's not unreasonable to assume that Discord would step in to thwart Tirek in the Triptych timeline, without Cerea there would be nobody to halt Tirek's third stab at escape. So Tirek gets loose, and with a bit more strategy and fine control this time he quickly grows far beyond the point where he can be stopped, and eventually devours so much of the world's magic that it collapses entirely, and he then starves. Seeing this coming, the Diarchs fully uploaded themselves to SUN and MOON, making the satellites self-operating at the cost of leaving their pony bodies empty, and Twilight created the Unity Crystals (possibly transmuting the Elements of Harmony) as a way of reigniting magic after Tirek is gone.
However, for some reason, there was a major social breakdown. Perhaps losing that much magic caused the ponies as a race to go through some kind of mental breakdown like what seems to have happened to the Diamond Dogs, relapse to a deeper level of herd instinct. Anyway, a huge amount of historical information, including how the tribes worked together and how to restore their magic, gets lost in the chaos.
11614408
Ah, but there's at least one upside: with everything about magic being forgotten, nopony knows that earth ponies have no true magic. We've finally gotten rid of the Secret!
... I really hope the earth ponies don't inexplicably decide to keep their powers secret in the G5 Continuum.
This ended up being a lot more in-depth than I expected. Even if it doesn't always nail Pipp's character from the show, it's still interesting.
The only error I spotted was:
should be forget.
This was an adorable story.
I checked out this story because the short description looked funny. Didn't look at the author. Then I read the first sentence. It led with a pronoun and then gave the antecedent, er, postcedent, at the end. I sort of chuckled ruefully to myself and thought it needed an editor. Otherwise if it carried on that way it would end turning into one of those Estee stories that refuses to tell you who the current point of view character is with every section of every chapter as if it were terribly clever to make the reader go back and count sentences to figure out who said what when the names are finally dropped thirty lines in. I realized I wasn't reading anymore and just going in circles about a writer whose style I didn't enjoy. Then I got to the part where the narration interrupted itself repeatedly, mid-word even, and I got this terrible sense of dread...
11615286
Damn man, that's crazy.
11614408
Honestly, I think it was a mistake for them to try to link Gen5 with Gen4 the way they did. There are simply too many inconsistencies in how the world works for G5 to be G4's future without a hell of a lot of
handhoofwaving and deus ex machina-ing.Agoraphobic Pipp is something I'd never considered, and yet it fits... so perfectly. It gave us a new angle of approach to the character that honestly works so well. And of course, you made her relationship with Zipp adorable - the two of them clearly so close in spite of their differences.
I loved this one, Estee. Brilliant.
Being a walking Tesla coil isn't going to make the heat die down so......
11615807
Honestly, G4 doesn't even fit in with itself so this is nothing new. Source is blue words as always.
11616365
Granted, G4 has its share of continuity issues as well, but I was thinking of more fundamental issues such as "The sun and moon are manually-controlled by the alicorns, using Magic to raise and lower them, and if something interferes with the alicorns, the sun and moon don't move", which is a thing that has been pretty consistent throughout G4. So, if "the magic went away" and the former princesses are all long gone... who or what has been maintaining the solar and lunar cycles for the last however-many-centuries-it's-been, so that half the planet doesn't bake while the other half freezes when they grind to a halt in the absence of the alicorns' influence? Gen5 doesn't even attempt to explain this.
11614699
Influencers have empathy?
11616634
Accidentally deleted post directly above this one. "Empathy" might not be quite the word for what is required, although if her mother managed to give her even a bit of noblesse oblige she should, if only for an aggregate of her audience.
Even without genuine caring she almost has to at least UNDERSTAND that aggregate to tune her actions well to be a long-running influencer. Right?
P.S. I still haven't read the whole story, not that it makes a difference for the "what is going through my head as I read" style comment I was making.
11616709
I get your point, but I'll like to point out that according to this story, Pipp's life has mostly been either carefully micromanaged public appearances, or having her ever whim catered to her by servants. So don't I think it's completely unreasonable that Pipp may be lacking in the social skills department.
Also my comment was meant as a joke but whatever
Look, as a dad, it is my responsibility to make this joke. Ahem. If at first you don't succeed, fry, fry again.
11614271
Based on the elaborate lies set up to deal with a magicless world, I figured the Pegasi royals are descended from Cozy Glow.
Wow, that got deeper / heavier than I expected for:
Nice! And Haven being a good mother who knows her children and is a good planner! Also nice!
11614176
we need a fic like this.
they touch some wacky artifact and say something like this and we has ghost Dash, or Raitity out for blood.
or Ghost Pinkie for breaking a promise.
Now, that made me lol.
🤣
I haven't seen G5 due to my lack of Netflix, but I've read plenty. Agoraphobic Pipp seems OOC, but I like how you wrote her.