Musings on Lyra Heartstrings, or The Likely Result of the Mixed Chromosomes of Twilight Sparkle and Pinkie Pie and Its Adventures.

by TMH

Chapter I: Remembering and Scheming

Musings on Lyra Heartstrings

Chapter I: Remembering and Scheming

There are two things Lyra hates. Well, actually, she has a fair bit larger list of grievances and gripes than that, but for all of our sakes let us leave it at two. These two objects of her spite are such:

Public restrooms (notoriously unsanitary) and guards who felt the villainous compulsion to uphold their occupation’s moniker.

There are several reasons for Lyra’s immense disdain for the abominable cretins: their haughtiness, dull stoicism, poor sense of humor, and obscenely reflective armor (seriously what do those guys do to those things?). But chief amongst these is their apparently sacred duty to make her life a Mission Impossible bloopers reel.

I mean really. She tries to break into the Canterlot Museum of Natural History’s archives and a guard apprehends her dangling a few feet above the curator's desk, she tries to break into Twilight Sparkle’s secret madpony laboratory and she startles Spike with her covert ops. gear (a black stocking cap with eye and ear holes cut out) and gets sent into Celestia’s bed (luckily the guards only caught her sneaking out the inner castle walls), even just trying to break into BonBon’s house to find out if she had bought a gallon of milk last Tuesday or a quart and being arrested for “disturbing the peace, constantly”.

Truly Equestria’s honor guard/army/navy/airforce/marines/petricultists were bidden by fate to ruin her innocent reconnoitering. As a good and loyal citizen of Equestria and subject of their eternal majesties the diarchs of the land, Lyra had never once attempted to do anything that would compromise the security of the nation and make way for the glorious reckoning that the thumbed overlords would bring.

Welllllllllllll, at least not since the last time she was hospitalized. Right now to be precise.

So this is the situation that Lyra finds herself within at the concurrent time of our brief recounting of the highlights of her tale thus far. Hospitals would be one of the omitted residents of her long running list. It’s not that she despised hospitals themselves, she actually found hospital food delicious, to the amazement of her peers, she simply despised the inevitable questions that came with internment in the institutions.

“Name please.” Lyra Heartstrings.

“Age.” A lady never tells, good thing for you I’m a mare. Twenty-four.

“Residence.” Ponyville, Equestria. Single living arrangement.

“Do you remember-” -what you were doing that got me here? Yep.

“Which is?” A matter of profound personal importance and secrecy.

“Come now Miss Heartstrings, what did you do that dislocated your left two legs and right foreleg?” Well he always did like it rough...

“Come again?” Drift Winds. A real stud that one. I can’t remember the last time a partner dislocated three of my legs.

“Ummmm...” (The good doctor had a noticeable blush) I guess I really am losing my mixed martial arts ability.

“Wha-? *ahem* I mean, uh, yes indeed it appears you have. Dear Celestia why do I always get the psychotic coquettish one? *cough* Well it appears everything is in order, your insurance has paid the bill. You may leave whenever you please.” Thank you doctor. I leave at once.

She then magicked the nearby window open, leapt through the oddly quaint looking portal, and calmy trotted past the bewildered onlookers with seemingly practiced ease. Before promptly cackling madly and initiating a gallop of the erstwhile adverb with the same appearance of practiced ease. Buildings buzzed by in a broad spectrum of pastel colors created by flora and ornamentation placed ad infinitum. And their inhabitants looked much the same for dissimilar reasons

The ocular onslaught was greatly diminished upon arrival at the mint green unicorn’s home. There were some differences between her house and most others in the town.
For one, the only flora visible on the lot were the nondescript bushes that often times occupy the ground immediately adjacent to a quaint suburban esque house, and a pecan (pronounced: p-can, pfft, Yankees) tree a little on the smaller side with some spanish moss strewn about its branches. The obligatory generic grass, of generic coloring, shading, height, smell, and all other facets of grass which I do not feel the need to list explicitly, was present also.

Whilst we took in the rather underwhelming presence of Ponyville’s Second Most Dangerous and Psychologically Unstable Unicorn’s, three years running I might add, place of residence. Our protagonist proceeded toward her home abruptly changing pace from a full-on gallop to a placid trot as she passed through the gate to the idyllic little white picket fence surrounding her lot. Most ponies would find her behavior both unnerving and surely the products of an insane mind. That’s not to say the residents of Ponyville thought otherwise on the second account, but for the former: Ponyvillians had grown accustomed to Lyra’s quirkiness insomuch as they rarely stared dumbfounded at her longer than a paltry number of seconds.

Lyra had reached the front door by this time and, as has happened to all of us at least once, realized she did not have her keys. In fact, she didn’t even have her saddlebags. Once again ignoring the oddness that an equinoid would have, or even be able to produce or operate, anything close to a key or locking mechanism, she began to mentally retrace her steps to attempt to locate her keys current resting place.

After a series of mental exercises, so intense and sophisticated that I shall not endeavour to explain it in any detail to the likes you, Lyra had determined that there was only one place that her saddlebags and their precious cargo could be: the scene of her latest heist, Sugarcube Corner.

One might ponder what business our protagonist might have at the local bakery. And if One were to have a narrator as informed, and as devilishly handsome, as moi then One might know.

Lyra was, as all Ponyvillians are, completely ignorant of the source of the powers of one certain mare. This certain mare, who shall henceforth be referred to as Puce Pastry (in a perhaps futile attempt to discourage her wrath), was infamous throughout Ponyville, indeed all of Equestria, for her seemingly logicless, well, everything really. So our heroine decided to go about finding answers the only way she knew how: breaking into Puce’s single room apartment above the bakery and watching her sleep.

To some: breaking into a house unseen and watching a pony sleep all night without any form of rest seems quite the daunting challenge (and the product of insane twisted logic).

To Lyra (equipped with suction-cup horseshoes, night vision goggles, and enough crazy to take one off the tracks of the train of): it was mere child’s play. A demented child with WAY too much free time and military grade hardware perhaps, but a child nonetheless.

With this, warped and twisted, plan in her head Lyra set forth just as the final rays of Celestia’s namesake escaped their heavenly origin and splayed themselves about Ponyville. She went over the contents of her saddlebags one last time.

Sheer face scaling horseshoes? Check.

Night vision goggles? Check.

Extra batteries? Check.

Ten caffeine filled syringes? Check.

Sudoku book? Check.

Notebook? Check.

Three quills? Check.

Ten capped inkwells? Check.

Buy milk? Not check.

Therapist appointment?

“Alright, good to go. I knew Twilight’s seminar on ‘Checklist Formatting, Categorizing, Editing, Elucidating, and Implementing. Advanced.’ would work wonders for me.”
And with that she began a merry trot towards her destination singing a macabre tune with a much too cheerful countenance and disposition.

A hooful of minutes later saw a single soul dawn a set of suction-cup horseshoes, a pair of night vision goggles, and an injection of concentrated caffeine. With a practiced ease she began her ascent toward the single window, on the second story, from which candlelight still shone. Positioning herself at an angle that the light would not touch to any major degree, she peeked her curious little peepers out and saw a sight that I wager many of you would pay much to see firsthand, or hoof as the case may be.

By a little light pink mattress and bedspread raised off the floor by an oak frame stood, in the light of candlelight coming from a, surprisingly enough, candle on a generic wooden end table, Puce Pastry herself, in all her light red colored glory.

“What was she doing?” You might ask. And I shall tell.

She was stooped over a little woven basket at the end of the bed which held the demon mare’s evil henchstallion alligator: Gingival. Our dear Puce was sharpening his wicked salivary ducts with a bristled instrument of torture. Surely anypony with a right mind would flee post-haste and cry themselves to sleep every remaining night in their putrid mortal existence after witnessing such eldritch horrors.

Lyra, however, is far from right and, indeed, her mind. Thus, thou shalt not be spared from any imaginable horror, and some unimaginable, that wouldst transpire this night.

Just as the maintenance of the reptilian dietary orifice was becoming monotonous for Lyra to observe, Puce did something extraordinary. She reared up on her hind legs and expelled a vast quantity of gaseous respiratory waste whilst holding her left foreleg to her evil pink death maw. Unfortunately for her this left her in a rather precarious postural position, being quadrupedal and what-not, and ended up succumbing to gravity’s tenacious command, and her body’s tenacious insistence, that she fall onto her bed.

Truly a most malicious act of life’s necessary processes.

Seeing a petite pink pony brushing an even more diminutive toothless alligator, and then rearing up for a deep yawn before falling backwards onto her bed with a satisfied sigh must indeed be quite the scare.

Diabetes inducing horror aside, Puce was not quite through with being conscious. Forcing herself back up with a “Oh -censored- you silly filly.”, and a truly horrific laugh she started her march of doom toward the window, and Lyra.

In vivid, and disturbingly technical, detail Lyra imagined her fate at the hooves of The Pink One. First, she would throw her a “Breaking Into my House and Spying on me Party” party. Next, she would give her a “special” cupcake, but the special ingredient would be -pause for dramatic effect- concentrated rainbow! Finally, with her spicy alias namesake consumed by an unsuspecting Lyra, Puce Pastry would wrongfully accuse Lyra of being an agent for an alien empire seeking to conquer all of ponykind and report her to the heavenly diarchs who would take it upon themselves to personally torture her untilallofhersecretswereforcedfromhermindandshewasleftabrokenmessonthecoldfloo-
STOP.

Lyra was not, is NOT, panicking. No she is trained for this kind of thing. Calm DOWN!

She knew what she had to do, it was elementary when you really thought about it. She had to magick her keys into the shadows of Puce’s room, use them to extinguish the candlelight, drop from the window, and abort the ill-fated mission.

Lyra grasped the keys in her saddlebag with her magic and quickly slipped them through the bottom left corner of the window. Having no time for proper caution, she quickly sent the keys racing against time through a dust infused track deep in shadows. Not caring to be caught, she rammed the keys into the candle with the proper amount of force, sending it, and her keys, tumbling through the unlocked door of the room and somersaulting down the stairs.

Caffeine still coursing through her veins, and arteries, Lyra quickly jumped from the window and promptly landed so that three of her legs were in intense pain. Biting her lip to keep from yelling out, she limped toward the direction of Ponyville General Hospital. Being very glad she had decided to bring along a book of sudokus.

After reliving these events, Lyra decided that the only way to go about reclaiming her keys was diplomacy. Bloody, infuriating, hawkish diplomacy. And if that didn’t work, well, she was itching to try out some, heh, invasive questioning techniques. Hehheh, hehehehehe, HEHEHEHEHEHEHEHE, MHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA-ow.

Remember kids, cackling evilly while having recently recovered from three dislocated limbs is never a good idea.

Comments

[Venter]

Grammar Score (out of 10): I'm gonna go with an 8. It becomes hard to judge in places because your sentence structure and word choices are often overly complicated, but it seems like your technical form and spelling are pretty on point.

Pros: Great re-imagining of a character who has too often been typecast by the fandom
A few very solid humor points.
Your language is sometimes very poetic and fresh

Cons: Your choice of vocabulary is often needlessly complicated
Some incorrect word usage
Occasionally hard to follow sentence structure

Notes: Okay, so for starters let me say that I like the story and am giving it a thumbs up. But it definitely needs work too. My main issue is that you seem to want to avoid using common words. I like flowery prose as much as the next pony, but it has a time and a place. For example,

With this, warped and twisted, plan in her head Lyra set forth just as the final rays of Celestia’s namesake escaped their heavenly origin and splayed themselves about Ponyville.

is appropriate, because a sunset is something to describe in a flowery way. (Side note; Celestia isn't named after the sun, she controls it, so calling it her namesake isn't really accurate. Still a pretty passage though). On the other hand,

maintenance of the reptilian dietary orifice

actually detracts from the description a bit. Sharpening a pet alligator's teeth is a very sinister thing to do; maintaining a reptiles dietary orifice is something that a bored zookeeper does. I'm a bit torn on

She reared up on her hind legs and expelled a vast quantity of gaseous respiratory waste

; while I normally would say that farting is something that doesn't warrant flowery language the extent to which you took it makes it absurdist and funny :-p.

As for sentence structure, this paragraph jumped out at me most:

I mean really. She tries to break into the Canterlot Museum of Natural History’s archives and a guard apprehends her dangling a few feet above the curator's desk, she tries to break into Twilight Sparkle’s secret madpony laboratory and she startles Spike with her covert ops. gear (a black stocking cap with eye and ear holes cut out) and gets sent into Celestia’s bed (luckily the guards only caught her sneaking out the inner castle walls), even just trying to break into BonBon’s house to find out if she had bought a gallon of milk last Tuesday or a quart and being arrested for “disturbing the peace, constantly”.

After the first three words, that's one long runon sentence. I had to read it several times to fully get what each bit of it was trying to say (and even now I'm not 100% sure; did Twilight magic Lyra into Celetia's bed?). Try using shorter sentences and limiting the complexity of your vocabulary, and I think this will evolve into a fantastic series =D.

I hope you enjoy your review. Please help me out by taking the time to read and review my fic, The Ballad of Jack and Sylvia: an Equestrian Odyssey

[Inky Jay]

This review brought to you by the group, Authors Helping Authors.

Fic: Musings on Lyra Heartstrings
Grammar Score: 7
Pros: Your preserve the ecclectic nature given to Lyra by the fandom, but put your own unique twist on it.
The narrator having the POV is quite interesting, and really helps with the comedic asides.
One can see where your comedy is, and it is definitely well executed.
Cons: There are a few pacing issues. The story seems to jump around a bit.
The grammar isn't bad at all, but there are a few minor mistakes that have potential killing power on your comedy.

Notes: This was absolutely hilarious and at the same time, refreshing. I love Lyra for her fanon personality, and I'm glad you've held onto that without using any of the old fallbacks. Keep up this good work, because it definitely deserves more views. Your style is also quite uinque and somehow meshes with the story perfectly. You've made a great choice in style, so I hope that you are able to keep it consistent for the story's sake.

Hope you're glad to receive this review, and hope you'll take a look at my fic, Marks of Harmony. It's a long one, so don't expect you to read the whole thing all in one sitting! That would be too much even for me.

[TMH]

1962559>>1961300
Thank you and thank you.
As far as the gaseous respiratory waste I actually meant for that to be seen as a yawn, hence respiratory and not dietary. I'll look into rephrasing that more effectively.
Also, I described Gummy's mouth as his "dietary orifice" as he doesn't have teeth.
Pacing is something I have a bit of a problem with.

I am being verbose intentionally, it comes with trying to emulate Charles Dickinson. I started this story, and my other one, while reading 'A Tale Of Two Cities" and I am currently reading "Oliver Twist". Though I have been told by some that I envoke a Terry Pratchett esque feel, which is odd considering I've never actually read any of his works.

Thank you both for your time and I will definitely look into your fics.

Carry On

[Venter]

1962685

That actually explains quite a bit. I have an odd relationship with Dickens; I love his stories and hate his writing :-p (I have often said that Tale of Two Cities would actually be my favorite novel of all time if anyone else had written it). That said, I know a ton of people who love it, so I'm sure you'll garner plenty of fans =D. Oh, and the whole passage regarding Gummy makes much more sense now that I re-read it with a fresh mindset - she's brushing his gums, not sharpening his teeth. I was confused by the use of the word Sharpen though. I think people might miss a few things just because of keywords like that.

[SpeederClaw]

Herro, SpeederClaw here with a tasty review from the group, Authors Helping Authors!

~Musings on Lyra Heartstrings

Grammar: 8/10

Pros:
-Got some good laughs at the ridiculousness of the story
-Lyra's characterization here is very believable as a fan rendition
-The narrative (and language) was definitely different and colorful

Cons:
-Few grammar mistakes that kinda threw me off course
-Sometimes it went over the top with language and I got lost (but I still 'got it')
-No need to make it three! I see no other issues.

Notes: Just want to say, 'She then magicked the nearby window open', made me laugh more than it should have. The word 'magicked' just did it and that's good considering that's a word apparently (). Overall the story was funny and I liked the crazy narrative. As stated before, there were some grammar mistakes such as making Pinkie a guy (Our dear Puce was sharpening his wicked salivary ducts) and missing an I somewhere I think. Other than that, ya did good.

If you get the chance please review my story, One Shot, One Chance. I'd appreciate any feedback you would have and I hope this review was helpful Ciao!

~Speedy

[TMH]

1977177
Thank you for your time.
I myself was surprised when I found out "magicked" was actually a word. The more you know.

As stated before, there were some grammar mistakes such as making Pinkie a guy (Our dear Puce was sharpening his wicked salivary ducts)

Maybe that's not clear enough, but "his" is referring to Gingival (a.k.a. Gummy).
As for any other spelling mistakes, I'm going to go back over it soon and check it out.

Very glad you enjoyed the story, and I hope you'll come back for more. (Which shouldn't be long now.)
I'll definitely give your story a read and a review as soon as I have the time.
Thank you once again.

Carry On

[SpeederClaw]

1977497 Now that I look back at it, I'm really stupid haha. I see now its his teeth as in the alligator. I see, sorry for that on my part.

[Blagdaross]

I'll skip the full AHA review, as all the points I would have made have already been made. (you can read my story if you like but don't feel obligated)

Crazy Lyra is crazy. I love that.

[Protocol]

Hmm, an interesting premise. While I do feel that it could be polished up a little more nicely, your story is quite decent compared to some of the stuff I've read to date. Unfortunately, my smartphone's running out of battery, and I really should be sleeping, so I'll leave it at that for now.

Expect to see another comment with a full review within the next 24 hours. For now, have a like and a notice as I venture off into dreamland.