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My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
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Man, just going full ham with the dictatorship here.
Also, for a moment I thought we were going to get ANOTHER detour in the form of "it's a wonderful life"
At least this distraction is wrapped up. Still feels cheap to make a big deal about the disease and then drop it, really glad it's not gonna be a factor though.
AND I SWEAR TO GOD IF TIREK SHOWS UP JUST BECAUSE
5395878
No. No detours. If anything, the 'It's a Wonderful Life' moment served to help put Lero back ON track.
Had to make a 'big deal' about it, so that my medical-minded readers can be assured that Lero's overall health is sound and that he won't be a hazard to his loved ones.
Well, while the 'distraction is 'wrapped up,' I want you to know that future chapters of this story will be building upon what has happened.
The cat's out of the bag, after all.
In all fairness, she probably would have (well, not literally twenty minutes) if Lero hadn't unwittingly thrown her off by helping Rainbow get the shelter under control before Fluttershy could. To suggest Twilight would be this monumentally slow on the uptake in any other circumstances would be utterly ridiculous.
5396041 I meant make a big deal in the previous chapters, while this one sweeps it aside all nice and tidy
I see what you did there.
5396184
Yeah, that's a snarky bit of meta-commentary I put in there. There's a second one, later on. It's something Discord says, if you're looking for it.
So happy, it's a chapter! I need some calm time after all of that, phew.
Twilghit Sprackle
Flutterysh
Applecajk
Rartiy
Pineik Pei
By your powers combined, I am Captnai Friendpish!!!
And a happy hearts warming to you sir. Thank you for another lovely chapter.
Mike Teavee
Let me commend you on a truly wonderful chapter. The explanations for Lero's resilience to Scroungers ailments and Equestrian pathogens in general seemed well researched and plausible.
Good to see spike being able to detail a bit of his time at camp too.(I'd like to think it's because you saw my ATSP question. Hey a bloke can dream.)
The reference to the twenty minute cure and the Tirek segue...
i.imgur.com/HySUd1q.gif
Brilliant work mate. I'm really looking forward to where you you intend to take this story now. Cause personally, I haven't a flamin clue. Then again I'm not that bright a spark.
You have mates
PhucknuckL
By that logic he'd be unable to extract nutrition from Equestrian food.
5396041
Precisely: I was in fact wondering if Lero would need to be held at arm's length until he had gone through every antibiotic known to ponykind.
Indeed: I liked very much that you wrapped up, once and for all, the Honeydew situation.
As to calling it a distraction, I believe that Discord said it the best when he explained that enemies and crisis don't wait until its convenient for you to deal with them.
Furthermore, not only that you are a good author and could handle the situation, but also that this situation could have forced an endgame: if Twilight had been forced to use the Stabilizing spell on Rainbow (or more likely, had to call the princesses to cast it), then she would have been forced to use it on everyone else. And, as is, she may still need to do so.
G-g-good r-read...Eh, I'M NOT TIRED! I'm just...wow, been readin' this for...how long? God, lemme just...rest my eyes for a sec here...I'll give thoughts when I...when I...
*DEAD*
5396898
Except Equestrian food isn't made of wrong-handded amino acids. She was using that as an example of how biologies can be incompatible, not a literal discription of the situation.
I wouldn't be surprised that Lero is going to take a long time to recover mentally, the words from his friends help, but he has just been through hell...again.
Not surprised that Discord was there, it was too good of a show to pass up.
Yay, drama. Also, I never want that horribly grating accent to show up again.
Now that the major chaos at teh quarry is over, will discord be picking up on the lesser chaos occuring around, depending on distance etc, Such as the non physical death of animals as Tirek plays Voldemort on them?
Evil not waiting due to chaos, is why when Celestia said she would be sending in security detail, they should already be there, but she doesnt have to announce it immediately, as unless you are playing certain restricted types of games, you dont announce to your opponant what you are doing before you do it.
It is dark, you might be zapped with an ice beam by Grue.
Man, Equestria's "government" is absolute pants. And everyone forgives Celestia because she's an incompetent and doesn't know any better? If ponies aren't ready for a republic, they should at least have a go at a constitutional monarchy with something like a Westminister-style parliamentary system. Lero, go edumacate some foals. Let the princesses go back to decorating the sky full-time. Actually, that's not fair. Luna knows what she's good at and sticks to it, from what we can see. Celestia just needs to put down the damned puppet strings and let "her little ponies" grow the hell up.
Moving on, how in the seven hells did Starswirl's spell even do anything to the Terrible Twosome (or the animals for that matter) after all the fuss you kicked up about how it works last time? "What does Starswirl's unfinished spell do? It swaps around Element Bearers." IIRC, you had the excuse of having the physical elements on hand when testing the animals, but that doesn't fly here. This is just weird.
5399239
Actually, I'm afraid to say you're incorrect on this count, my friend. Starswirl's unfinished spell swaps Element Bearers, yes, but what was cast on the Terrible Twosome, (nice name!) wasn't Starswirl's unfinished spell.
It was a similar-but-not-EXACTLY-the-same prototype spell which Twilight Sparkle developed and tested in her cloud house laboratory.
In other words: a modification on Starswirl's original disaster. A modification that would permit Twilight to perform a Swap on anything she aimed her horn at: whether it be a fellow pony or completely non-equine animals, such as dogs and cats.
(There's a reason I named that particular chapter 'That We All Better Relate.' Because this line was not part of the unfinished spell's original incantation.)
Oh, and also, Twilight specifically DIDN'T have the physical Elements of Harmony 'on hand' when she began working on prototypes in the cloud house. She left them all behind in Golden Oaks Library, down on ground level. Because she was deathly afraid of re-swapping all her friends (and possibly herself along with them!) if the physical Elements were in close proximity during spell testing and development.
5399372
I kinda figured that would be it, after I posted. So Xeno!Twi's (functionally, if not intentionally) trying to solve the "general form of swap spells", and not just Starswirl's spell in particular. Which would take a lot longer, especially since she's not sure what it was trying to do, and the Swap seems (at least in canon) to have been an unintended side-effect of the botched spell, rather than its intended function. Fair enough.
Wow. Those last few paragraphs were really disturbing. That mental hospital sounds like Hell.
5396683
Thanks! I give a lot of credit to my editors for that one.
Actually it was. That question made me realize I just HAD to have Spike say SOMETHING about his camp experience. Maybe at some point, I'll have him go into more detail, in ATSP or DR!
Thank you, thank you!
I just had to include Tirek because...
1) It amazed me that an old evildoer such as Tirek went and escaped his prison, mid-season 3... and somehow Celestia either didn't learn of it until the time of the Season 4 finale, or didn't really start taking serious action until then. Could you imagine a similar thing happening with, oh… Charles Manson?
2) This has always been yet another thing that's bugged me about the original Magical Mystery Cure episode, in general. To have a thing like the Swap happen to the Element Bearers, whom all Equestria depends on to keep them safe, when evil's always on the rise. Talk about putting all your eggs in one basket! Talk about leaving yourself open for attack!
This matter was also something I sought to address through Honeydew and the Sicklefins: what happens when the heroes' minds aren't what they should be, and villains suddenly pop in without warning? Villains who mean business?
Hearing you say this, I feel like I've succeeded as an author!
Foam-padded orderly golems are both a fantastic idea, and really fucking creepy. Nice job.
5409505
Well, even the finest mental hospital ever built still won't be a place anybody would like to linger in… sane or otherwise.
5408080
They'll never be short-tempered with their patients, or unnerved by any creepiness, are highly resistant to 'Hannibal Lectures'...
I give great credit to my man, Rikmach for this. Even though it was my idea to put Exit and Dew into an asylum, Rik was this asylum's decorator, from the Orderly Golems to the murals on the wall. Well done, buddy.
Dude, your chapters have bigger word counts than some complete stories on this site... I like how Pinkie's core personality seems to be reasserting itself a bit now that she's stable enough not to be tortured by her swapped cutiemark.
Minor complaint here: referring to bacteria or viruses as being made is inaccurate here. Since we're talking about a naturally occurring form of life here, the correct word would be "evolved" or "adapted".
I think this is my favorite line in this chapter.
5410885
Lero's a historian, not a scientist, and and that line was written from that perspective. Since he was following their logic, none of his mares were interested in correcting that minor point.
5410885
Minor nitpick: Lero has given every indication that he's American - and 60% of them don't believe in evolution. So 'made' while being scientifically incorrect it is broadly culturally correct given his background.
5417661 ??? 60% of them don't believe in it? I've not heard that number before. hell, I'm religious and believe in evolution. not the theory of us evolving from monkeys, but that creatures adapt. This is what makes such arguments so difficult. Sometimes, people don't reject the entire works of a scientist. Such is the difficulties they have to put up with.
as for the story, damn, that was nasty, though I loved twilight's reaction to lero thinking he would get sick.
"lyra, with me, gotta learn some nubs" *walks off to library
5419193
So you 'believe in evolution' but at the same time you reject its most fundamental tenants? That's like believing in the existence of water, but not accepting that it is wet. Idiots like you are where the 60% figure came from.
5423075 o.O fundamental tenants? I always find it funny to hear people say that if you reject one part, you reject the whole. Why is it so difficult to believe in creationism and Darwinism at the same time? We're talking about a being whose idea of a week could span millennia. Does God even have a sense of time, or is it just something humans made up in our infinite need to catalogue everything? Haha, the only thing we can't quantify is our need to quantify everything.
Oh, and carrot? Ice isn't wet. To counter the obvious counter argument, when it does "become wet" it's no longer ice, is it?
5423697
Answer: For you? It isn't. Because you're too ignorant to even use the right term for evolution, let alone understand what it means. If you did, you would know that the two terms are mutually exclusive. You'd also know that one is science, and can explain things, and the other is (at best) mythology and (at worse) a political tool used to cynically perpetuate ignorance, and bypass civil liberties.
Don't try to be clever. You lack the education to succeed.
5425520 Aw, now you made me sad with your hurtful words. I really don't know if I should feel hurt, though, or sorry that you're trapped in such an understanding of the world. One of the bigger conflicts of science, was light a particle or a form of energy, was eventually declared a stalemate, with the answer being "why not both?" Why would an answer of intelligently designed evolution bother you?
Finally? We're here on this site, reading about fucking magical ponies (sometimes by both definitions of the phrase). Why are you so serious about this? I can garner nothing from your arguments other than disgust at what you seem to consider "lesser creatures" and undisguised hostility to any who impinge on your idea of the "truth", and don't tell me it isn't and idea of the truth, it IS the truth, because even what we consider to be true can be incorrect if we don't have all the facts.
TL;DR? Relax, it's a story about ponies, man/woman/vegetable. Go hug a puppy/cat/cute and fuzzy critter. Your blood pressure will thank you for it.
5492119
Keep reading. What actually ends up happening after Chapter 10 may surprise you.
5495594
Ah, Spike. I absolutely love Spike as a character… he's so underused in Xenophilia stories.
Lero's primary focus is on keeping his family together and restoring stability, enduring whatever ordeals must be endured for that sake, and overcoming the problem. The family unity is already dangerously frayed. So he wouldn't 'lash out' as hurtfully the way young Spike's doing. Lero's modus operandi is to swallow his feelings, do his best to undermine the Swap even while playing its game, and dance around the big pink elephants in the room.
From Chapter 19:
I'd say that's a lot to fix, wouldn't you?
Hmm… well, on one hand, Divided Rainbow does have both the 'Sex' tag and 'Mature' tag… so readers WILL know that this stuff will be happening. But in terms of, say, perhaps… alerting them right on the table of contents by putting a little asterisk next to all the chapters where sex happens?
I deliberately chose not to do that. In my experience, if a reader LIKES sex… he'll ONLY read those chapters, and eschew all the rest. If a reader DISLIKES sex, he'll skip over the sex chapters completely… as though nothing important or plot-relevant happens in them. What's important to me as an author is that Divided Rainbow is taken as a whole by my readers.
You're wrong about one thing: it's not JUST five different characters. It's pretty much THE WHOLE WIDE WORLD. Thanks to the Bewitchment, EVERYONE is expecting Rarity (not Rainbow Dash) to be in a loving, sexual relationship with Lero and Twilight… including Rainbow Dash. What do you do when you have that amount of pressure, and EXPECTATION borne down on your shoulders?
I'll say this: one major difference between Lero and Twilight was that Rarity gave Lero a lot more SPACE to BE 'reluctant' because she felt so very guilty about him almost dying from Mr. 7. Twilight wasn't granted that luxury. Rarity put her on the spot and forced her to make a choice at the time that Chapter 9 was taking place.
You think Twilight DOESN'T have any emotional hang-ups about what she's done? Becoming a complete shut-in, never leaving her library, burying herself in research, becoming too scared to take any risks with Starswirl's spell… there's NO inner turmoil within her whatsoever?
Owie!
Regardless, it really is nice hearing all this feedback from you, wlam. I hope you're continuing to enjoy this story of mine!
5499611
That works fine to me as an explanation for his behaviour and fits the character well. I still would've liked to see some of those feelings voiced every so often in the parts where his inner thoughts are narrated directly, though. It would've made it a lot more apparent that you were intentionally shooting for that. Though I'll admit, I kind of just expect HiE authors to routinely write their protagonists as wimpy pushovers for no obvious reason by now, and it's hardly your fault I'm starting to turn internet bigoted here. Sorry for not expecting better from you.
Maybe it's just too subtle for me... or too obvious. Either way, even with that hilariously blatant hint, the thought honestly didn't occur to me. Sure she's got a lot of inner turmoil - she screwed up and something needs fixing. Burying herself in books and becoming paralyzed into inaction is just how she goes. It's such a natural reaction for her character, I didn't really consider the possibility that it was intentional characterization from your side.
Knowing it was meant to be a hint towards the suppressed feelings that I've been looking for actually makes another scene I just remembered suddenly seem much more deliberate - she really doesn't deal well with guilt at all, does she? Would that maybe be the reason for her absolutely weird behaviour right after the Rarity thing? Trying to convince herself she hadn't done anything wrong, to avoid the guilt? That would be pretty impressive long-term planning and actually get the whole situation to finally make sense to me.
Going by all that, I take is that you're planning for an eventual "proper" resolution to the conflict, yes? Maybe after the swap is resolved and everyone already has to deal with what (and who) they did while brainfucked or something? If you could just confirm that you have anything in that vein planned, I would be happy and satisfied and done complaining. Until I find something new to bitch about, anyway. I'd appreciate a mail if you don't want to give out public spoilers.
...I would be fine with just an in-text warning "sex scene starts/ends here." I'm gonna skip over them anyway, so it's really just a little convenience thing I'd appeciate. Now you're aware of this, so if you start hiding plot-relevant snippets directly in there, you've really only got yourself to blame. :-P
5501242
Hey, no biggie. It's true that a LOT of humans in HiE tales either tend to run towards one of three templates: the Uber-Mighty No-One-EVER-Tells-ME-What-To-Do Warrior Sue, the featurelessly indistinct 'Anon,' or the wimpy pushover.
I wouldn't go so far as to say the original Lero of the original Xenophilia WAS one of the latter... but he DID tend to let his mares 'lead the dance' more often than not. When planning Divided Rainbow, I set out to take Lero in a new direction while still remaining completely faithful to his source material.
No, not really.
Oh yes. All things considered, is it really any wonder that she indulged in a little 'weird behavior?'
Remember: it'd only been a few short days ago that she set the events of the Swap into motion: completely uprooting all her best friends' lives, scrambling their brains, and setting them to destroy each others' livelihoods in a nonstop spiral of misery. THEN consider what her Swap did to her own family: she lost Rainbow Dash completely AND Lero almost died very brutally.
So you can bet: after Twilight chose to make love to Rarity, she DID want, very badly, to believe this choice was the right thing. Twilight needed to have a "right thing" she could cling to and take consolation in, after all the ruin she'd wrought.
Stay tuned.
5502270
I hardly needed telling. That niggling little bit of cognitive dissonance you've just resolved for me has been bothering me for months every time I scrolled past your story somewhere. Now I can go back to just liking it without feeling it needs fixing! Thanks for taking the time to talk it over instead of being all coy about it, like some other people.
Whew! It took days of reading, but I've finally caught up! I have to admit I'm a little dismayed to have done that, considering I've haven't read an in-progress story in years, and I'm supremely impatient!
But at least I had the good fortune of catching up at the end of an arc instead of two or so chapters earlier where every chapter ended in a cliffhanger.
Now the horrible waiting-for-an-update stage comes.
Hmm, always a pleasure to read your story Mike. I hope that Twilight comes up with a solution at some point for the situation unless you plan on it ending with the Soul mending spell bit. If that's the case, I'll admit I'll be a bit disappointed but also find it interesting that you would chose to leave it like that. We'll see what happens from here on out
5532909
Oh, what the heck, I'll give a LITTLE spoiler to you all:
The primary focus of the next plot arc will be Fluttershy and Applejack.
Agh... That accent was physically painful.
It was nigh impossible to take anything from those last few paragraphs seriously when you give Exit such a comically exaggerated accent.
Stuff like THIS is why I'm so against writing out accents.
EDIT: Here's two articles about writing accents and dialects. I think you, and any author trying to write an accent, should read them.
Writer's Digest
Quick & Dirty Tips
5535872
Just between you and me? That was entirely on purpose. I spent a LOT of thought, care and research designing a truly repulsive-sounding voice for Exit, (in ALL senses of the word 'voice') including a phonetic rendering that would set any grammarian's teeth straight on edge.
Eh… well, I had to be true to the the character (and the accent I'd given her.)
I can't help but enjoy ridiculous accents. ESPECIALLY in non-comedic situations, (that's where they really shine!)
It'd be interesting if the ending involved success, but not in a way that gives the princesses what they were willing to sacrifice Twilight and her friends for. It's both ultimately the happier end for the herd and honestly, they also just kinda have a failure to their schemes or two coming.
5543236
You'll see!
Hey Mike,
Let me say I'm really happy that you have released 8 chapters since I was last here
And I'm sorry I wasn't here to read them straight away
Well I'm going to re-restart this Story, just to make sure everything I remember is accurate (also because I want to).
With thanks,
Rainbow_Dash82
5567016
It's also based on something I noticed about the princesses. Which one would you expect to be sneaky, subtle, and manipulative? The princess of the day or night?
And which one actually is?
Which one would you expect to be forthright, direct, and quick to action?
And which one actually is?
5536849
Really, it's one of her most redeeming features- the willingness to call anyone out on their shit, regardless of who they are.
5670737
Well, the violence is never pointless. Excessive? Maybe. But not without precedence. If you look back on the other two "villains", (Mr. 7 and the Glufferflork.), both of them were rather violent, even gory, yet we get little complaint about them. I think it's because these were the first villians who were sentient beings intentionally inflicting suffering on other sentients, whereas previously the villains weren't sentient, and/r their victims weren't either. Then again, maybe it was the length and detail that went into this one? I'm not sure