Twilight Sparkle has important friendship problems to solve. However, that's hard to do with a "reformed" villain following you around all day.
(Context for later readers: This is based on the old Season 5 buzz when Starlight Glimmer — who got beaten in the Season 5 opener but escaped — canonically showed up in the background of the café in "Amending Fences". It was a big deal at the time.)
Audio versions:
Livereading by mindlessgonzo and friend!
Reading by Pony&Wolf Productions!
Finalist in the July 2015 Writeoff! Now revised and expanded for FIMFiction!
"Highly Recommended" by MLPmatthewl419! * Other reviews: Present Perfect, Titanium Dragon, PaulAsaran, Ghost Mike
Chapters (1)
Still amusing.
Ladies and gentlemen, Pony logic at its finest.
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Pony Logic? Pinkie Pie.
Pinkie Pie? Pony Logic.
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So, Rainbow Dash can never be corrupted because she's always covered in rainbows?
Works for me.
地獄のようなあなたが持っています。
6326062 As it should be. Beautifully done.
Yep, as I thought.
Enceladus does things to a person's mind, I tell ya. Makes 'em paranoid.
This was amazing , as always.
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Now I'm trying to remember who I was talking with when I had the discussion about the headcanon that the pony verb "to make friends" literally had two meanings: 1) being nice to people, 2) blasting them with giant rainbow beams.
Beware a princess declaring that making friends with your country is an Equestrian priority. You're about to get nuked from orbit.
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これは私がインターネット翻訳の魔法の力を使用するときに何が起こるかです。
Still, isn't it funny that she claims she's been studying Japanese, while mangling it so badly? Hmm? No? Okay, maybe that was just me.
(Ninja-edited thanks to Chinchillax.)
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Thank you for reading and enjoying!
Wat?
Like, nothing, with that list of examples I'm pretty sure that's exactly what Twilight is.
Poor Starlight, but it cannot be said that she didn't know the risks.
Ok, was totally not expecting that ending.
*snerk*
Nice.
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You're welcome!
Upvoted and fave'd with the force of a million normal upvote and fave's!
Inconvenient Starlight is inconvenient.
Very much so.
You know what? I still don't trust Starlight. I can believe the preservation-motivated attempt at self-reformation, but I'm still not buying her trying to ask Twilight for an autograph. I don't know, maybe it's just me, but I'm with the goddess of vengeance on this one.
Doctor Horrible is in Equestria!? I knew the evil league of evil had an Equestrian branch! It's to only explanation for Bad Horse! Is he still doing that sing along blog thing?
Also, if Doctor Horrible was her therapist that's reason enough not to trust Starlight.
6326870 A.k.a. the Takamachi Nanoha School of Friendship.
img10.deviantart.net/d477/i/2013/293/7/5/nanoha_teaches_twilight_how_to_make_friends_by_thedesertkitsune-d6r8ji5.jpg
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Also Magical Lyrical Nanoha
This was quite delightfully silly, just the thing I needed after an early morning shift and a night that only got me about two hours sleep. Thanks, horizon!
What the actual f
k 
Good job at making me feel sad about being amused.
Yaaaaaaay, Starlight!
No, Twilight, not every villain requires magical rainbow beams of death! Like Gilda!
*crickets*
...Okay, not really a villain...um...what about Trixie!
*crickets*
...Corrupted into one by a magical amulet, but wasn't one originally, right...
But...uh...um...what about...um...
Well, Starlight had a nice run...
I'm sorry. But that cover-art is just perfect. Crack up every time I see it.
*insert long, thought out comment here*
lol
Yay new horizon words!
cdn0.sbnation.com/imported_assets/1016769/3879_-_animated_gif_chuck_norris_dodgeball_thumbs_up.gif
Oops
socialcomotion.com/Blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/My-God-Meme.jpg
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And my readers be like
pinkie.mylittlefacewhen.com/media/f/rsz/mlfw6117_small.jpg
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Rescued from my cut file for posterity:
Fun fact: I originally had added one more example in the list of defeated villains, but decided to axe the joke to keep the E rating.
As for Gilda: given that Griffonstone appears on Twilight's map of Equestria, the ponies basically annexed her entire nation and let her whole race stew in grinding poverty until it rose to the level of a Friendship Problem for the Mane Six to solve.
It would have been so much easier for her to take the "blasted by rainbows" route.
6328576 I can do you one better than that, Magical Pony Lyrical Twilight.
"Oh, I have been studying Japanese!"
Oooorrrr you just used Google Translate. Because you know, that's definitely a thing in Equestria.
I mean, considering how quickly they advanced from candles to speaker cars I'd say soon they'll have it.
I am not very confident about sing-alongs as a form of effective group therapy, either.
What did I just read?
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Bad Horse's Sing-Along Blog?
Why isn't this a thing?!
6333072 Oh wow. Heck yeah it should be a thing! How has Dr. Horrible not been ponified yet? It already has sapient equines!
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Mad Horse, Mad Horse, Mad Horse, Mad Horse
She rules the pony nation, the Goddess of the Sun
Her love of making friends has just killed ev-ery-one
The players are all helpless, and the game's just beguuuun...
Melt the Big Bad with solar rays?
No, friendship's gonna save the day!
Mad Horse, Mad Horse, Mad Horse, she's mad
A railroading DM is watching so beware
There is no information you can make her share
So make the Mad Horse gleeful
Or bow to the Nightmare...
You're saddled up, there's no recourse
It's Hi-Ho Silver
Signed, Mad Horse
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So... Who's going to be the one to try and convince Bad Horse to sing...?
Is that "Ut" Starlight says at the beginning a spelling mistake or something? Because I didn't understand that.
Other than that, very funny story!
I must admit, while I think the first 80% of the story is really funny, I still have the same problem with this that I had in the Writeoff, and that's that I think the ending is really weak. I wish you had found some way to change the ending so that the joke--whatever it may be--had more impact. As is, I don't find the brick joke about the diary funny. It's just Celestia randomly being there and Twilight telling her something that's really of no consequence.
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I think it's the onomatopoetic form of the sound one might make while interrupting someone.
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All y'all are making me wish I knew more about that particular crossover.
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I love the cover art myself! I don't know who originally memed it, but I "borrowed" the image from FanOfMostEverything, who used it in a blog post while commenting on the episode.
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I don't think Google can exist in Equestria until it gets a pony-pun name.
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I know that over in Tumblr-land there's Ask Dr. Adorable. I haven't specifically read any text-based Dr. Horrible pony fanfic but I'd be shocked if it didn't exist.
Also, there's Bad Horse here on FIMFic, but if 6333163 can convince Bad Horse to sing, he's a better
mandragon than I.6333120
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What Dubs Rewatcher said in the comment directly above.
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Fair enough! I remember a fair number of folks having the opposite reaction (finding most of it a "YAJF" – Yet Another Joke Fic – as Bad Horse called it, but then appreciating the ending), but both reactions are fine; not every story is going to work for everyone, and you're probably on the wrong side of the particular brand of humor here.
If you want some better Horizon comedy, I think you'll appreciate The 18th Brewmare of Bluey Napoleon a lot more, because it's the exact opposite of this in several important respects. Rather than starting faux-serious and derailing to an anticlimax based on character destruction, the whole thing starts out as what looks like cheap mockery of Blueblood and then veers into a serious deconstruction of his character and some heartwarming moments of pony empathy before leaping back onto the rails for a climax that squares the two. It was the runaway winner of a Writeoff gold medal and I'm pretty proud of it.
(Plus the title is a direct Karl Marx title drop and the whole thing's a roundabout satire of 18th-century French history.
)
Well played, Twilight. Well played.
Also:
Go metric or go home
6334764 I don't know of the crossover so much as I do the anime—had a friend who tried to get me into it a while back, but I just couldn't feel it, y'know? He kept joking about how the main character would blast enemies and they'd inevitably become friends with her later on, to which I'd always quip "Oh, so it's Japanese MLP!"
He couldn't stand MLP at the time, so he'd rage so beautifully~
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Also, the ending joke is (well, is supposed to be) that Twilight stole the diary.
I think this version's last line implies it much better than the original, but that's not a high bar to clear.
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Trust me, I already have Brewmare in my favorites. I've been shadowing you for a lot longer than you've known!
That explanation clears it up a little bit, but I still don't think that the brick joke is strong enough to carry the ending--in addition, looking at it again, I feel like it detracts from the "Starlight just wanted an autograph" joke, which really seems like it should be the main thrust of the ending.
Oh well. Can't please everyone, I suppose. Congrats on the feature, cutie pie.
I reviewed this story!
My review can be found here.
That was a beautiful montage-type thing you did there. Best I've ever seen it done in writing.
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Thank you! My gut tells me it worked exactly because of the montage; I didn't want to stretch out the joke. (Also, the original version had to fit in 750 words for the Writeoff. Necessity is the mother, etc.)
Amusing, but not that deep. So yeah, points for keeping it short! Random locations FTW as well.
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Thanks!
I'm getting Mark of Destiny edited, to keep the deep stuff running. This one's sort of a palate cleanser.