“Dear Princess, this will be the last day you rule Equestria. But your enlightened leadership entitles you to some explanation…”
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Horse Voice
Joined 12th Apr, 2012 ·
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Very interesting choice to present the letter without any further context, for reasons the letter itself notes. The Dark tag does carry some unpleasant connotations, but in the end, how much this letter matches reality is up to the reader. I appreciate that open-ended aspect.
Also, I can't help but notice that the writer made no mention of Discord.
In all, rather enjoyable
This fan fiction was increasingly compelling as I read. It has creepy elements that reminded me a lot of video game bosses. The last two parts of the letter were incredibly morbid in a good way. You did excellently, I had to read it again just to comprehend everything.
What a stupid story. what a waste of energy this story was. I utterly despise stories that underestimate ponies so much or overestimate humans. Amazing how much disregard someone could have for people and yet hold them up as so superior to everything else.
It's kinda frightening that I actually agree of how you describe our world.
A very interesting story, but I find it to lack an actual reason why he decide to attack and try conquer Equestria. The only semblance of reason is there are some flaws in this "perfect" world, but doesn't say further what they are.
7464784 The author is not the narrator, and the narrator is not necessarily lucid.
I think it's not a great stretch to speculate that, since the mirror pool is magic, there's probably a spell that will erase the mirror clones en masse. So that might be solved quite easily. I gotta say, there's not much that seems "dark" here except for how deeply cynical anonymous is. No one even kicked this guy's puppy, he's just a big super-jerk.
7464787
"Anon" has been used in so many HiE stories by now, he's practically his own character by now. He's kinda dumb.
Eh, not bad, and the addition of the mirror pool was clever, but not your best work either.
7464845
Anon: BEHOLD MY ARMY AND TREMBLE, ROYAL-HORSE!
Celestia: (Poofs army away)
Anon: Well... This is awkward, isn't it?
As to the story; prose on point but didn't much care for the thing as a whole. Nifty idea, not-so-stellar execution.
I'm a bit confused over why he sent this letter. It's a supervilllain monologue and has no purpose.
This wasn't overly horrifying either. The build up to him sending out his army I don't think was enough, it wasn't bad ass enough to leave me in awe.
The format was pretty similar to Leviathan, but less original and interesting, so not many points there.
I still enjoyed it, but not nearly your usual standard of work.
7464784 He had an unlimited army of people. If done properly, then what could stop an infinite army? And if you do have an answer to that, take into account the narrator may very well be insane, given how much he hates his own race.
All exposition, no payoff. This doesn't really work without any contextualization, imo. Sorry, just couldn't dig it. Seemed more like a table scrap of an idea for a story than an actual completed work of prose. No malice intended here, I just couldn't get into it without anything to actually attach the letter to the world it's written about.
I'm .... not sure what I've just read. Well, I know what I read but I lack any and all context with which to place it. I don't understand what any of this meant. From what I can gather, a misanthrope in the highest sense wanders the multiverse to find a perfect world (which does not and cannot exist, 'utopia' means what it does because of that), finds Equestria and all but declares it thus - and then goes to great lengths to unseat Princess Celestia with no mention of the reason behind this choice? With nothing stating that Princess Celestia is the only thing holding this world back from being 'pure' or whathaveyou. The only thing that hints at anything resembling a reason is the single line of 'simple, honest work' but that's ... barely anything. We have a crime but no real motive. If there had been more exposition, it may have worked - though a rambling letter may be something you were trying to avoid - but it leaves too much to the imagination to really be poignant.
I'm sorry. You know I love your work but this doesn't leave me with much of anything after reading. The only thing I can think of is that this is a reactionary piece to something recent I'm unaware of. Perhaps a work that was dysfunctionally obsessed with the innocence and purity of the universe as told through the medium of a child's cartoon? I'm not sure, grasping at straws here.
Honestly, the choice to forgo context only serves to frustrate rather than horrify. I'm left wondering what fandom trend this is a lazy attempt to parody through the transformation into cosmic horror, but without context I cannot even determine that.
Furthermore, the expositional and somewhat disorganized nature of the letter just robs it of most of its real kick. I don't feel scared, I feel lectured to by the most boring conqueror ever.
All in all, this story is just an example of how even the acclaimed Horse Voice can have a bad day.
7465122
Well, he wants them to surrender. The letter is to incite them to do so; otherwise he just has an endless zerg rush which doesnt meet his stated goals.
7464845
Well, seeing as Twilight knows at least one spell to banish mirror pool duplicates, all she'd need to do is find a way to set it to wide-range dispersal and bathe them en masse.
Anyhoo, personal thoughts : I see this guy as a nutter who is a megalomaniac and doomed to fail. Basically, Lex Luthor went to Equestria, made mirror clones, and now Celestia/Luna are going to show him that Superman has nothing on them. But then, that's also because the idea of this jerkbag winning (Unless done as pure comedy of errors) is just blech! So go Team Pony!
"Discord, would you mind reversing gravity in front of the castle for about fifteen seconds? Thanks, you're a sweetheart."
While I agree that this probably isn't your best story, and the conceptual step explaining why he's decided to unseat Celestia is missing, this does not deserve downvotes, especially so many of them...
7466595 Probably from people thinking the narrator is expressing the author's hatred of humanity, and don't realize the narrator is a biased one.
7466595 This is clearly born out of a reaction to, ugh, "Anon" stories where the protagonist is a recluse that thinks humanity sucks because they don't understand him, justifies his celibacy by saying it's his "choice" to remain pure, and has the personality and demeanor of a petty dictator that desires to see reality bend to his whims.
Celestia must be unseated because only Anon deserves to rule.
This is OK, but I've kind of read this type of story before. The whole "letter from an invading entity buying time" is quickly becoming a bit of a cliché in the fandom, and so adding a human into the mix doesn't really make much of a difference. What this human can achieve that any pony couldn't, I don't know.
Even so, the vocabulary variety and how the story builds upon each vital revelation makes it an entertaining read, even if it doesn't quite pack the punch others may have.,
Technicaly Celestia is human from alternate universe. :D
So how is he different from the humans he despise? He talks like normal stupid human. :D
Also he should realize that the copies aren't from solid material. They are from magic energy. That means machines created by this method wouldn't work, because only the surface looks like the original item.
Next question is how would he hide presence of such big army from pegasi ptroling above the forest, from animals and from Discord. The pool is probably creation of Discord and he would imidietly know about its overuse. Also the clone must have some kind of magic battery. That means, after a time it will disapear.
7466595 We are missing a «meh» button here. There is no real substance to the story and it is awfully undevelloped.
Bless you, Horse Voice. ;_;7
7465130
There's no indication that the narrator is human, and does appear to have distanced themselves from humanity.
7468653
Your first three points are entirely headcanon. And as I said before, there isn't any indication the narrator is a human being.
Your fourth is moot for several reasons: There's no evidence that any ponies patrol over/through the Everfree, and the narrator apparently has no idea that Discord is loose. As well, we don't know the origin of the pool itself, nor do we know Discord's methods of detection or if they will alert him to this plan.
And the 'point' that they run on a limited power source is also headcanon, as there is literally no indication of a time limit for them.
All other things aside, I feel this is one case where leaving the air of mystery does not actually help the story. There's just too many bits missing to feel like this story is complete. Who and what the narrator is would help, and could've been a hilarious moment if all this being written by a character we know from another fandom that's a 'Bad Guy with Good Reasons' or the like.
lets attack the people that MOVE THE SUN AND MOON this will end well
Well, I don't really know what to make of this one, quite honestly. It's a joke on someone, but I'm not quite sure on who.
7520069
Long story short, I choked. It seems even I cannot redeem the "Anon in Equestria" subgenre.
My next one will be better. Pinkie promise.
7520090
Well, it's a very successful persiflage of the "hurr, all humans suck except me because I'm awesome" style of character, that's for sure.
You know, this was a really great story. Nice job. Not really dark, but still. Nice.
7466784
7465130
Eh, let's be fair; he has an army of a hundreds, maybe thousands, but that doesn't mean he can take the city. We don't know if the Mirror Pool can replicate technology, or if it's magic is limited to replicating people. Magic can be weirdly literal, but let's be nice and assume that it can. A fully equipped army of several thousand might be able to take the city- but its even odds, since it is very unlikely that he outnumbers the Royal Guard, not to mention without a way to neutralize or overcome the Princess's magic, that army has a very short self life.
Even assuming that they take the city, which isn't an unfair assumption, they still have one insurmountable problem: holding the city. The mirror copies aren't sapient. There's no way they could function as an army over a long period of time. Eventually, these guys will fall apart. The guards or the Crystal Empire (or maybe even Thorax and company) could come back and re-take the city. And of course it would be very easy for Celestia or Luna to simply escape and get a new army.
Honestly, as likable a villain as Annon is, he has no chance of permanently ruling Equestria.
7640255 You're missing two important points in your analysis: 1. The army does not number in the thousands, it is infinite, and 2. The narrator is insane so we have little truly accurate information in how likely his plan is to succeed.
7640287
We're going to be nice and decide that there is no way to magically wipe out the army at once, and that Discord isn't getting involved. Assuming that the Mirror Pool has no limits (and remember that it did stop spitting out Pinkies, so it's possible even if it isn't likely) there is still a very finite number of doppelganger he can make before he begins to loses control of them all. He himself stated that he had difficulty in controlling them at first, and only brought them out in small numbers. He learned to control them with practice, but unless he has psychic powers then he has to instruct each one personally.
At some point his army will outgrow him, and this guy is a classic narcissist. He wouldn't want a bunch of inferior copies of himself running around outside of his control. He wants to make sure everything goes perfectly according to plan. He wouldn't want to leave the mirror pool automatically spitting out duplicates. It wouldn't surprise me if he took steps to make sure his clones couldn't access it. If it was infinite, then he still wouldn't end up ruling the Canterlot; in the best case scenario, city would be destroyed by his untrain mob of an army.
Oh, and we're assuming that these guys are an untrained mob, because if he wanted competent fighters with detailed plans he would have needed to train them in secret underneath Twilight's nose, and training a few hundred people in secret would be hard enough, let alone thousands.
I suppose he could have trained a small number and used them to control the masses, but even with this command structure, there are limits. They'll still hit a wall where they have too many men to control. The Princess's could escape and involve more cosmic forces. A normal army could sack Canterlot, cutting him off from the Pool, or take the Pool directly. That cave isn't very big, it can only hold a few dozen and there is no ventilation. It would be very difficult to defend over long stretches.
I am assuming that the information he's giving is sound; it could be 100% wrong. But in order to annualize something you need to be sure of the facts. Since I can't ascertain what happened in this story, I must assume that this information is viable.
7640471 The Everfree forest is a big place with room to train. He could conceivably set up a command structure and training regimen to get his men decently organized, all the more while continuing to get more clones. A big issue would be food though I'd imagine- not easy to feed a million soldiers. But I could see him turning to cannibalism. It would not be at all surprising if he's vastly overestimating his abilities, but if he really were a super-general the likes of Ghengis Khan or Alexander the Great he could win.
7640597
You can't train an entire army in a forest infested with monsters. It's difficult to find your way around, the trees make it difficult to see everyone and therefore you see how the troops are moving as a unit, there are monsters trying to kill you, and most importantly fighting in a city is completely different from fighting in a forest. In the forest you have underbrush, you can't see everything around you, and generally unpopulated. In attacking a city, you have to mount an organized offensive against a trained opposing force, you have to clear streets and march together (whereas in a Forrest you'd generally on your own) and you have to know how to take advantage of the towers and buildings that surround you, which is different from taking advantage of trees and things.
Since the army is finite, then it all comes down to training, and there's no way he could have prepared a massive force in a Forrest to be ready to take a major city,
7640597 If he was a super general, then I'd expect that the army is the distraction, and he's using some kind of mad science or magical artifact to defeat the Princess's. The letter could be a diversion.
7641607 When I say super general, I mean as in his mind works the same way Napoleon's does or Ghengis Khan's does. Not as in he has super powers, but that he is very good at tactics and strategy. And I do think he could conceivably train a decent combat force in the forest, it's been done in the past by tribes. The general combat skill set isn't too different either. He wouldn't necessarily need to take out the ponies in one shot either, he could do something like capture Ponyville, fortify and get more clones, then move on to conquer more. His army can get very large too, since there is no limit on manpower and he can feed them with cannibalism. Even with massive casualties he can still capture whatever objective he wants.
7642429
Leave the clones alone long enough and they'll start to get annoyed that they aren't in charge. Intelligence is something built up over time, but a large portion of a man's personality is something they're born with. It stands to reason that his narcissism is something he's always had, and therefore something his clones will also have. He can't keep the clones out in the world for very long, before each one starts to wonder why they aren't in charge. A similr flaw was examined in the episode of Transformers Prime: Armada.
Tribes train in the jungle, but they also do most of their fighting in the jungle. Moreover, how many tribes have maintained secrecy while living right next to a civilian population? For that matter, how many tribes can field thousands of soldiers?
Moreover, the size of an army can't make a huge difference when its' stacked against phenomenal cosmic power. The element of surprise might have let him take Canterlot, but unless he both the princess's he's screwed, and that assumes his plan to take Twilight out off-screen works AND that Cadance is as powerful as her aunts. The only times we've seen the Princess's beaten was when they were overpowered by superior magical forces. We don't know the limits of their immortality, but seeing as normal ponies can survive having a grand piano dropped on them from at least thirty feet in the air, and be healed in the same day, then it must be substantial.
I refer to my original point: He could take Canterlot, or maybe even Ponyville, but he could never hold it or the rest of Equestria.
7642588 It all depends on speculation about the capabilities of the clones, about whether they want independence or if they'll share the same goal of conquest and their intelligence level. Clones are the one resource he has, so the capabilities of his clones determines pretty much everything.
I can't help but imagine a brony (as the first thing he does) sending this letter to Celestia as a practical Joke!
Celestia eyes go wide with horror as she drops the letter and looks out her window and see's... nothing! Just as the panic is replaced by confusion, she hears a knock at the throne room door... she opens it with her magic, ready to fight but stops when she see's the creature described in the letter alone wielding not but a white flag. he looked a her, smiled and said "gotch ya"!
wouldn't that make a hell of a first impression!
Check out this reading of the story by Scribbler:
There's... nothing really here. It's a letter from some jackass with vague motivations and an army that may or may not be able to take over Canterlot... but I'm gonna side with 'no' on that.
Muh gawd, dem reflexive downvotes. :V
So this is an Anon-in-Equestria, eh? Clever, with the "legion" advancing on Canterlot, there. I think this wouldn't have worked if it wasn't so open-ended; the reader can fill in how things go to their heart's content. (Though one could chastise you for not taking a side in this "persiflage", as it was put above. :V)
7703774
Thank you! I like to think I have a reputation for making awful story concepts work, but this time the jury is split on whether I finally met my match.
As for my not taking a side, I myself honestly don't know whose ideas are right, here. Maybe I should have simply told people to play nice, but perhaps I'm desensitized to internet drama.
first i was like (great one of those self species hating bastards) but then you got me interested......and now i want a sequel
7642740
don't forget the only example (that i know of) with the mirror pool clones is with pinkie, without her maturing in adulthood that could be what she was like when she was young (not rockfarm young) so it stands to reason that he could be producing mostly developed easily manipulated children, and humans can do things in the masses, plus he could train some to train other and keep going until he has thousands of trainers teaching clones to be solders, and he could also be doing this in a barren world, he is not confined to the Everfree, he can world hop after all
8359279
Sadly, inspiration is a fickle thing, and so if you want a continuation, it will have to be in your own imagination.
Also: Tempting as it may be, it is not generally considered kosher to respond to comments more than a few months old.
8367662
i never look at how old the comments are, time shouldn't deny them answers and opinions
Good story.
I would love to know how it turns out!
8367662
Kosher is topical.
It's plain rude and inconsiderate to reply to months old comments.
But I may write a one shot...
8375363
I got nothing, as regards extensions of this story. It was really just a thought experiment to see if I could technically make "Anon in Equestria" good. As you can see, the jury is split. But I always encourage people to write their own extensions, if they have good ideas for such.
...so I want to upvote this. But I'm still waiting for the rest. It's a terrific buildup, but no payoff.
I find my self rather disappointed by that.
Still it was rather well written. So, kudos
8419813
The trouble is, this was more or less an experiment to see if the Anon in Equestria concept could be rehabilitated. I like to think I've earned a reputation for pulling amazing stunts like this in the past. But it seems this one was a bridge too far, and I can't think of a good way to fix it. Apologies.