"Once upon a time, the most handsome, clever, hilarious..." Discord began.
"Ahem," Fluttershy politely cleared her throat and gave Discord a look.
"...creature did not exist yet," Discord said, cutting his self-praise short. "Instead, in this little slice of paradise was only the roiling chaos. Oh, every now and then something would drift in through a portal, or some wizard would try to harness the unfathomable forces to conquer the world or some other boring drivel, but other than that things were fairly peaceful."
"How does this..." Twilight P began. Fluttershy shushed her and gave her a warning half-glare. It managed to be both adorable and menacing at the same time.
"At some point, bits of chaos in the form of various creatures appeared. They drifted about, randomly colliding and merging every so often, until they started to form a rudimentary consciousness. I'm a bit fuzzy on the details, to be honest. But this next part I like to think I've pieced together quite expertly," Discord continued. He fell into pieces with a sound like shattering glass. The pieces reformed into a silk screen and shadows, which shaped themselves into remarkably accurate sillheutes.
"Two alicorn sisters appeared," Discord's voice said, coming from the general area of the shadows, "Now I don't know where they came from or whether there were alicorns before that, but at any rate they must have been the first in awhile."
The alicorn shadows, one slightly taller than the other, danced about.
"Things went along pretty much as normal for a few decades, until one of their usually oh-so-predictable fights with one of those would-be tyrants took a turn."
A third shadow joined the other two. It might have been a kirin, though it was hard to be sure. A bolt zapped from it towards the smaller alicorn. The larger jumped in the way and fell down.
"It was a lucky shot, but sometimes that's all you need." A hint of bitterness krept into Discord's voice at this.
"Usually, you'd predict how this goes. Younger sister flies into a rage, blah blah blah, older one gets back up and all is well. But this time... she didn't get up."
A bolt from the remaining alicorn shot at the possibly-kirin and it fell over.
"Shocked at what she had done, but also mourning her sister, there was a lovely funeral service."
A bearded shadow showed up in the kirin's place and the prone larger shadow was lowered below ground that the observers were not entirely sure how Discord was projecting.
"Then, a few days later, a miracle happened."
The larger shadow reappeared and pulled the old 'tap on one flank while approaching from the other' trick most Pegasi learned in school. The smaller went through an exaggerated motion of shock and they hugged.
"After exchanging notes, the older sister was pretty sure she could do it again. They weren't eager to test it, but the next time a villain came along, the elder was perhaps a touch less cautious?"
Now what was certainly King Sombra's form appeared. A zap from him downed Celestia.
"The death circle sealed away the Crystal Empire, and sure enough, Celestia came back a few days later, right as rain. Well, it wasn't long before both of them started taking full advantage of this power."
Celestia and Luna were shown jumping off of a building, then hurling bolts at each other, then getting stabbed with spears.
"Now had Starswirl still been around, he might have been able to tell them, everything has to balance out somehow. A pony, especially an alicorn, is a big bundle of magic, and most of it is Order. So somewhere, Chaos happens."
Now the alicorns were replaced by a mass of shadows of different creatures.
"Here's one of the fuzzy parts, but it seems that other creatures attuned with Harmony could develop the same power. So the proto-me had bits of all of them, but none had taken to the ability quite so... enthusiastically as the sisters."
A bunch of pony shadows appeared and started merging with the others. Soon a familiar form emerged. It grew until it was normal size and Discord stepped through the screen. The ponies looked back and he was, in fact, no longer behind them casting the shadows.
"So wait... Celestia's your... mother?" Twilight P asked, both incredulous and a bit upset.
"I think Luna would be too?" Sunset added, less upset but still finding the whole thing a bit odd.
"I think they'd be part-parents technically," Twilight H said, "How many things are you anyway?"
"Hmmm... seven? I think. It might be more," Discord said, counting up on his clawed hand, which grew new claws as needed.
"Does Celestia know?" Spike asked the most logical question.
"I've never mentioned it to mummy dearest," Discord said with a shrug. "Sometimes I think she suspects. I'm pretty sure Luna's totally in the dark though." Discord grinned. "Get it? Dark? Because she's the Princess of the Moon?"
"So, what you're saying is, every time I die and come back, another of me pops up here?" Twilight P said, ignoring Discord's terrible joke. "And if I do it too much, another you will be created?"
"Oh I doubt they'd be as charming and accomodating as myself," Discord said, a tuxedo, top hat, and cane suddenly appearing on him, "And I CAN absorb them. I don't want the competition."
Twilight P perked up. "Oh, well then there's no problem."
"There IS a problem!" Discord said, "A big one! Celestia and Luna are one thing. But you, Twilight..."
"But me?" Twilight said.
"Frankly, you taste terrib-le**," Discord said, prounouncing it as 'terr-ee-blay'. He was suddenly in a Maitre Dee uniform with a mustache.
"Oh yes, he tried eating a few of you earlier, but he started vomiting them back up!" Fluttershy said with concern, "His poor tummy just couldn't handle it!"
Spike chuckled at the mental image.
"Spike, that's rude!" Twilight said, turning her head towards him then looking back at Discord, "I'm sure I'm delicious!"
"Oh don't get me started!" Discord said, throwing up his claws and turning a bit green at the memory, "Celestia is pleasantly sweet and sour and a tastes a bit like chicken. Luna is rich and savory with just a hint of lemon. But you're like pouring sugar on brussel sprouts served in spaghetti squash!"***
"Huh, do you think that's why Celestia and Luna don't die very often?" Sunset said, "Like, when Discord was stone they didn't want another one?"
"Or they knew the extra chaos could free me," Discord said, "But that's not the problem now! We've got a bunch of proto-Chaos entities floating around, and I can't keep them down. So what are you, Twilight, going to do about it?"
"Me?" Twilight P said.
"I'm pretty sure he didn't mean me," Twilight H said.
"Yes you!" Discord said, pointing first at the wrong one before quickly changing it to the correct one, "Take some responsibility!"
"It's not my fault I'm... what, healthy and sweet?" Twilight guessed, "...Well ok I guess it is." She thought for a moment, "I can certainly avoid dying going forward but..."
"But?" Discord said, crossing his arms and tapping one claw impatiently.
"But we've already learned so much!" Twilight H said.
"And there's that deal with the Griffons for alicorn steaks," Spike said.
"Steaks?" Discord said, making a face, "How can they stomach that?"
"Oh, well, being a mix of lions and eagles, Griffons can stomach a wide variety of meats. They can even eat carrion in times of shortage," Fluttershy said helpfully.
"I'm amazed at how much alike you and your counterpart are," Sunset said.
Twilight started pacing in a circle as she thought, per her usual.
"The organ transplant idea was limited, and we can probably re-negotiate with the Griffons with a good salespony," Twilight P said.
"Maybe Trixie?" Fluttershy said, "Starlight says she's done well dealing with Grampa Gruff."
Twilight P nodded. "So I can restrict myself to some agreed upon number going forward... Say once a day?"
Her friends started snickering as Discord had poofed into a wig and unicorn horn and started imitating her. Twilight P looked behind her, but Discord was now across the room in a white robe and halo. He went back to normal on seeing Twilight's glare.
"No I don't think so," Discord continued, "If I have to, I suppose I could handle once a month."
"How about once a week?" Twilight P countered.
"Hmph," Discord said, crossing his arms.
"It sounds reasonable," Fluttershy put in. Discord looked at her, slumped, and sighed.
"Oh fine. You're lucky you have such good taste in friends," Discord said.
"I agree," Twilight P replied.
"But!" Discord said, straitening up, "I insist that that not begin until we've dealt with all these!"
"Hmm, is there some other way to disperse these shadows?" Twilight H asked.
"Shadows?" Sunset said.
"Well, what else should we call them?" Twilight H said, "They're 'shadows' 'cast' by the other Twilight when she dies."
"Makes sense to me," Sunset said.
"Can we focus?" Discord asked, "I don't know if there's another way. I've never needed to try before."
Spike looked out the window at the floating Twilights, then around at the space. "What if we took them back to Equestria?"
Everycreature looked at him. Spike became a bit nervous.
"I mean, they're creatures of Chaos in a realm of Chaos, right? They're only a problem because they can soak up the chaos. So what if we put them in Canterlot's dungeon or something? Then they'd just stay put."
"It's a thought," Discord said, stroking his chin with his claw.
"Not as clean a solution as I'd like," Twilight P said, "We only have so many cells."
"Isn't marshalling scarce resources a key feature of research?" Sunset said slyly.
"Oh yes," Twilight H said with a nod, "Even things like the Manehattan Project, which had effectively unlimited funding, had a limited supply of uranium to work with, not to mention power, personel, and gaseous diffusion chambers."
"Right then," Twilight P said with a firm nod, "I'll just have to make every death count! Maybe different ways of dying will even affect the flavor..."
"Yes yes, I'm sure I'll be a Twilight Gourmand before long," Discord said with a dismissive wave, "Before all that though, perhaps you could get yourselves out of my home?"
It took a second to process the unusual phraseology. In the lull, the closet door burst and Twilights spilled out.
"Hi, I'm Twilight Sparkle!"
"Hi, I'm Twilight Sparkle!"
"Hi, I'm Twilight Sparkle!"
"And then Buffy staked Edward," came Discord's voice as the group was buried.
*Best way I could make sense of the Discord/Celestia interactions early on while maintaining the later Discord/Fluttershy ones. Not that in favor of the Discord-Fluttershy romantic ship in general but that's another story, and will probably not be told another time.
**I don't know how to type that little 'e' with the accent over it.
***The brussel sprouts and sugar have meaning, but the spaghetti squash is just in there because I hate spaghetti squash.
è
If it's supposed to sound like the vowel in "hey," then that's the acute accent, é. If you have a Compose key, then you can type it by entering Compose+E+' (the single quote mark). Or you can use Unicode, which on Linux looks like Ctrl+Shift+U, followed by the appropriate hexadecimal numeric code (different for uppercase and lowercase). It's a bit less straightforward on Windows, but you can install third-party utilities to emulate this functionality. Google is your friend.
Also, WHAT WAS THAT ENDING?!
So... what happens if you kill, not absorb, a chaos copy, would you get an orderly Twilight clone?
When did Starlight get there?
Guessing that was a typo.
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Windows has character map with all Unicode characters, that can be searched and copy pasted from.
If you take a Twilight clone out of the chaos realm and kill it, does it come back to life, too? Because if it doesn't, then technically every time Twilight kills herself they would get two bodies to dispose of.
If killing them is a bad idea, I feel like jailing them is still wasting a good business opportunity: Who wouldn't want their own pet princess?
In Windows, you use numpad codes for characters not available on your standard keyboard.
é is ALT (held down), then press in sequence 1 - 3 - 0 on numpad. A lot of French classes ingrained that one to memory. â is 1-3-1, ä is 1-3-2, à is 1-3-3, and so on, so forth, so they're in specific orders. All the poker suits ♥♦♣♠ are in sequence, all the arrow directions ↑↓→←are in sequence, etc. You get get a lot of ‼fun‼ characters ♪ by experimenting ♫ with ♥Unicode♥ alt+numpad codes.
Can you turn a pile of Chaos Twilight clones into an Ordered pile, by putting inside a box and squeezing till theyre a crystaline mass? Or would they end up amorphous glassine?
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Forgot she wasn't there, actually. Altered the line.
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Yes I could have googled it, but that wouldn't have been as funny. :P
Ah, so it's alt + numpad on windows machines. I knew that at one point, but it's been awhile. I'll test it. é Cool.
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My thought was that they are ethereal enough that you can't really kill them per se. Or rather, if you can, they're still a bundle of chaos energy, so it's just shifted the problem. But if you were to blow them up, the energy would get dispersed into the local area. Didn't think of that previously. It would be something to try. Might put something about that in the epilogue. They do seem to be stopped by solid objects so they should be compressible.
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They wouldn't really be clones at that point. I know the term 'amorphous solid'. Does glassine mean something other than that glass-like substance? That's all google comes up with.
Anyway, another good thing to try! For science! Honestly there are so many ideas I could keep this going indefinitely, but I think I'm gonna round this off as a narrative and write a sequel type thing that deals with those in a format that's not explicitely narrative.
The talk of chaos entities made me think of the Warp from WH40k, and the implications of having something like them forming...
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Lol, I noticed. Imagine my surprise when, not 5 minutes after I write that comment, I read the part where you already did exactly what I wrote in my comment. Hell, I had half a mind to go back and edit my original comment to reflect that.
On an unrelated note, great job on the fic, it’s one of my favorite in this fandom in quite a while and I absolutely love what you’re doing with the footnotes.
not quite a buffy reference but still.. woo Buffy the Vampire slayer reference XD
Also i can very much agree with you Needling, Spaghetti squash is horrible.. even with brown sugar
Anything short of outright cowering from Fluttershy qualifies as that.
She'd find a way to kill him eventually because that's what the author sets out to do by writing the story in the first place, but it'd be closer to a fair fight than she's used to from vampires because he doesn't have any of the usual weaknesses to exploit. It's a good thing she has the enhanced speed and strength required to keep up with him and more experience actually fighting despite her shorter lifespan, or we might end up with a "Starscream vs Rainbow Dash" situation where the character who everybody expected to curbstomp their opponent was curbstomped themselves.
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Have not tried it with brown sugar. We looked at it as a diabetic subsitute for pizza crust at one point. Rarely can I not finish my wife's cooking but I could not finish that.
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There's a story for that? I've only seen it as a one-line meme.
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I'm sure someone must have written the full story at some point, but probably not by someone who's read enough of the Twilight Saga to realize that its vampires are actually seriously overpowered (which often goes hand-in-hand with the sort of bad writing they're taking issue with).
10761383
When the early comics were being made there was no statement on their canonicity. But in the S7 comics they were very clearly coordinating, which I took as a statement. Not sure what the issue is between them and Shadow Play, actually, but it's been awhile. Example?
Regardless, if there's a source saying otherwise, I've no problem accepting those early ones. Hence why I asked. Not... crazy about Nightmare Rarity arc (the very first one) or Anon-a-miss, but I think those are the only two I find truly problematic. And I'd love for Sombra's redemption to be canon, but that's the hardest one to fit in, owing to character's reactions.
You know, I had forgotten about the hollow shades thing. What did they say in the latter episode?
Not sure how the 'argument is invalid' thing was meant to be read (text does not convey nuance well), but to elaborate on my personal philosophy of canon: The comics being canonical to the show is an additional assumption unless there is a statement or strong implication to establish it. And the general rule is Occam's Razor: Assumptions should not be multiplied unnecessarily. Thus it's cleaner to neglect comics from show canon prior to the point where there is evidence indicating otherwise. Contradictions within the show are also problematic, but we are forced to accept those and try to find/create a reason. This is effectively the background of the 'tiers of canonicity' model used in such fandoms as Star Wars (pre-Disney) and Evangelion.
That's just one model, though. There are others, and so long as it's clear which one is using, I don't really have a problem with them, which I was perhaps less than clear about.
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Ah. Honestly I just find the meme funny and it seems like something Discord might say, if he knew about it.
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We have statements that the show writers and comic writers couldn't actually collaborate even for the Season 7 tie-ins where you'd expect that to be mandatory. And that the show writers were all but actively discouraged from doing that with each other even when writing episodes that actively lead into each other. Oliver has more here, and the specifics in other blogs that I rechecked for them while composing the previous comment.
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That's also interesting, and raises weird questions about the S7 comic timing, but I meant about comics being considered canon on par with the show.
Edit: Quick scan of his other posts finds one on 'contradictions' (between comic and series) where he references a twitter Q&A, probably with "Big Jim" Miller. I have the info to find the reference now, so you're good. Hmm... this does require me to reconsider a few things. Thanks for the heads-up.
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Also I think you linked to the wrong blog post there, as it doesn't mention coordination, but I'm familiar enough with that author and their sources that I'll believe it, even if I haven't read that particular factoid on non-coordination myself (or at least, have not read it recently enough that I have any recollection of it).
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One big proof that they aren't. Other than the whole HASBRO saying they aren't. Is this.
The Sunset Shimmer Fall Arc. Which was made after Equestria Girls.
They have Sunset Shimmer and Lyra the same age (no problems there). Then she goes to the other side of the mirror looking like she did when she first showed up on the show. DESPITE THE FACT that Sunset Shimmer in the movies (Celestia's room, and the photos of her past pagents) showed her as CMC aged. Which was the age Lyra was shown to be in cannon in Amending Fences.
So no. The comics, most definitely aren't cannon. At all. They are fan works (like fanfics) that the makers paid HASBRO for the rights to make money off of it.
So this unofficial sequel has potential. Despite the several glaring problems that pop up, it's mostly a pretty great little bit of comedy.
We're giving it a star, so we can keep track of it, to see how it progresses in the future.
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And one proof that this is irrelevant: the season 7 finale. Not even in any of the obvious ways, but because Hollow Shades has apparently been an abandoned ruin for centuries despite its first mention being Apple relatives from there. The episode even goes as far as to point out the discrepancy only to sweep it under the rug without actually addressing it.
To put it bluntly, the show does not have continuity, and only ends up wearing its underpants as a hat when it tries to pretend otherwise.
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First typo fixed.
You know I don't see the Southern colloquial 2nd-person plural used in print that much. From what the contraction is, certainly, "y'all" is more correct. Never really thought about it: just put the first thing that came to mind. I'll leave that one as is so this discussion makes sense
In my neck of the woods (this may not be common) "you (singular) will" is closer to "y'll" and "y'all'll" is "You (plural) will".
Geeze whole lot has happened since that comment! As you can probably guess by how far apart the dates on chapter postings are.
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"Wearing its underpants as a hat." Now I'm picturing the MLP logo with upside-down underwear (briefs) over it.
And for some reason Applejack doing that. I imagine human undergarments would confusing ponies.
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If it wasn't obvious this is a silly story dashed out in one draft. :P
FWIW I really do have only one post left on it now. Got said post 90% written then got interrupted. Just gotta hope I can remember what I was writing when I go back to it.
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https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/y-all
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/y%27all
https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=y%27all
Plural you ^_^, there you go. Got you some nice dictionary links so you can see how it's used. (Love #2 of Urban Dictionary tbh).
--
And truth, there was quite a lot. Tbh, this is a quirky, and funny little story. Sure, we'll state that the comics aren't canon (for aformentioned reasons), and the two Twilight's, and Sunset Shimmer are indeed the same age (Since time is 1:1, it's just ponies are superior genetically, socially (in most areas not related to technology), and in terms of mental development.).
That said. How you treat the death experiments, Discord's backstory, Twilight's addiction to seeing how far she can push things. Are all quite interesting and funny. We look forward to seeing more, when you have the time to pop out more chapters, and it was definitely deserving of the star and upvote.
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Heh, that definition 2 in UD is amusing and reminds me how annoyed I was at that meme.
I meant actually that a lot has happened irl with me. I hope I can finish up the epilogue soon and move on to my next creative effort. I try to do only one at a time so taht I actually finish stuff.
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Oof! Well, best of luck in your IRL stuff and hope life treats you well.
Did you mean Sunset?
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Whoops. Yeah I forgot Starlight wasn't there when I wrote that line. Fixed
Oh hey nice characterization.
I feel like if these were chaotic counterparts to Twilight and then they would be kind of corrupted and deformed and grotesque but I guess that's kind of just personal interpretation. This certainly is yet another explanation of discord. That doesn't explain how the sisters and apparently possibly other creatures are cheating death just that they are
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Just realized I misspelled crept, but I ain't changing it at this late date.
I considered something like that as a possibility if too many aggregated, but that woulda been a whole story dealing with that and I was trying to wrap this up at some point.
Hold ALT, press 1 3 0 on your numpad, release ALT. That will type é, pronounced "ay".