Quinch

Quinch looked at Penny, puzzled for a second. Then it clicked.

"They're called Valkyries where I come from," he said, touching the wings on his helmet. "If those are the ones you mean, anyway," he added, since the nature of her question implied they weren't here before. Unless he actually did grow wings. He didn't feel any, so... illusion? Magical side-effect. He was not fond of the boots, but he could have done without actual wings.

He looked up as the creature materialized, virtually, in front of him. "Clean," he said simply, and the cacophony of signals and shapes vanished like the flicking of a switch. The thing was... big. Not as big as some things he'd had to deal with, he thought, with sour memories of the Kronos Titan, but it definitely fell under the giant monster category.

He couldn't fight this. Not effectively. He definitely couldn't beat it down. But, he thought, as he tried to make sense of the word jumble the poet spewed, if you can't beat them...

"No deals," he said to the voice in his head. "But I can work with this."

He leapt into the air, the boots propelling him up and to a hover of the multi-limbed shadow in front of him, and reached out, touching its shoulder.

I haven't read many fics since way back pre-S2, but one I really liked was Simply Rarity. It's been completely decanonised by now, of course, but it's still a very touching, if sad background story for our element of generosity.

Princess Celestia on a unicycle, having the time of her life.

@@Seamore Sandwich, what about size? Are the others literally inside him?

One fender bender - I was driving down a winding gravel forest/tall bushes road when a guy whipped out in front of me around the corner. We both turned, but we smacked each other's corner.

The judge ruled it was nobody's fault. Which was kind of BS, since the guy was going too fast, but at least I didn't get blamed instead.

@@Seamore Sandwich, what does the Forgotten One look like? How big, overall shape... I missed most of those bits if they're covered in the thread.

That she does. I like what you've did with the facial expression and body language too.

I ship EmberSpike like UPS!

Really halfassedly?

For me, the episode was a very mixed bag. On one hand, Spike finally seems to be growing out of his bumblefbee stereotype, and the variety of dragon designs was very nice to look at.

On the downside.... it was really, really, really predictable. Of course they would team up, of course Spike would give up the throne in favor of his friends, and of course Ember would start learning the meaning of friendship. It was, beat by beat, a story most of us have seen at least a dozen times over in other shows.

The Garble slapstick was fun as hell tho.

I love it. It doesn't hurt that I've grown up on a comic that was a similar premise of an incompetent spy agency, but the level of dysfunction in Archer is an order of magnitude greater.

What is with the disks?

@, you're exaggerating.

It's only one city.

"Cancel that," Quinch shot at Zhu. "The longer you wait to see what will happen, the less time you have to change it. Admit that plan A is tango uniform, say inspiring words at the funeral and start coming up with plan B now." He looked around, still bombarded by signals. One upside of this whole situation was, he was definitely not in an illusion, as they were never this.... noisy. "Make it one that doesn't involve anyone else dying."

Something - or someone else caught his eye. Another pony, frozen in panic. The biometrics were useless, whatever weird biology these things worked on made it useless, but even he could read body language this obvious.

"Hey," he said, softly. He reached down at Penny, an indigo iron giant in the storm with a gigantic gloved hand extended. "Everything is going to be all right, but I need you to stay calm." He was lying, of course - not because he believed everything - or anything would be, but it was too early to believe anything. But someone frozen in terror was useless at best and a liability at worst - so giving them a purpose, no matter how potentially useless, helped reassert control, whether by him, or themselves. "When you see a break in the winds, run and get the Prince-"

"Can you hear me? Hello?"

Well, that was abrupt. No... actual signal. Magic, probably. Maybe.

He reached back up, putting a hand on his ear.

"Yes," he said simply.

"Talk to me."

Is anyone - or has anyone, to be more precise - read it? I kind of have, in fact I suckered a poor schlub into reading it all {a few years ago} in a marathon session, which made him.... extra-fun to talk to afterwards. I first heard of ponies on the MSPA forums, for that matter. It only seemed fair, as a friend of mine made me read it in turn, and so on.

I kinda dropped out of it after a while, the post-Act-five was a huge letdown once the story started rotating around tertiary characters and cherubs came into play and everyone started dying {repeatedly, I remember the pegasus cloud when the trolls first started getting bumped off} - say what you will, Hussie has no sense of pacing. Or maybe he does and chooses not to use it, hell if I know. Still, now I feel like I should reread the entire thing, from start to finish, just as a matter of accomplishment.

So, how do you feel about it?

old rts called command and conquer wich is cool

Oh god I'm so ooollldd!!

{also god damn that ingame music}

I finished Half-Life 1 a couple weeks ago. Amazing game.

I remember being holy crap a FPS with a story?!

{but god damn Xen Valve what}

Finished Max Payne 2. I used to not care for Mona but now I appreciate how much of a badass she is.

It definitely grew from the first one - the original was just a train of noir cliches {not a bad thing in itself}, the way the plot in the second one jumped back and forth to keep you hooked was brilliant.

Completed Mother 3 in under a week. Because a relative was really pushing it to have me beat it.

Did you like it? Sheesh, that game is sad. But whoever translated that thing was genius.

As for me? Uhm... good question. I've been replaying a lot of old games I have but haven't really finished any before losing interest. X-COM {openXcom rebuild}, Alpha Centauri, Galactic Civilizations, Psychonauts.... I think the last game I actually finished finished was Tales from the Borderlands. It's nice how interactive storytelling genre is coming back, now that it's not limited by having to film everything on a CD.

@@Seamore Sandwich, before I post, is she also in Ponyville, or outside of it?

{yes, I suck at keeping track of people}

Another quick question, what's Penny's shtick?

Since there's not much we can go on from the two-minute glimpse we've gotten into a Nightmare Moon-ruled Equestria, what we can do is combine it with what we know of Nightmare Moon initially and make some speculations.

First, we know that Nightmare Moon was created from Luna's bitterness and insecurity {true or not} about being overshadowed by her sister, and her main goal was to regain - and keep - recognition for her rulership over the night, to the point of excising daylight.

Second, she rules from the Castle of Two Sisters, which happens to be situated smack dab in the middle of Everfree Forest, rather than Canterlot. It's also evident that Everfree is as dangerous - if not moreso - than before her reign, despite her being able to mow down an entire pack of timberwolves without so much as breaking stride. That, in turn, leads us to conclude that, despite being the sole ruler of Equestria, Nightmare Moon definitely does not welcome visitors.

Furthermore, since she doesn't care to secure the area around her own centre of government {such as it is}, there is little reason to expect that she would care about the safety in the rest of the kingdom, which means that the ponies are suddenly in a position where they have to protect themselves from nocturnal predators.

Touching back on her initial motivations of recognition and admiration, therefore, we can confidently assume that ponies primary purpose is, as far as Nightmare Moon is concerned, consists of pleasing her, praising her, and remaining loyal to her and, assuming she does make forays outside her castle, it is to enforce that.

Speaking of loyalty, it is surprising to see Rainbow Dash as a captain of her royal guard. Given that Celestia is no longer in a position to resist Nightmare Moon's reign, and she makes it clear she doesn't considers her, or her return a threat, either through her own means or by other ponies. There is no resistance to her reign - that she knows of. That, in fact, might be the reason for the terrified expression Rainbow Dash and the other guards give Twilight when she mentions Celestia - assuming they can play to her sense of unthreatened supremacy, it is the perfect place for a band of secret Celestian loyalists. After all, if Nightmare Moon has no threats to her reign or safety, she would most likely be keeping them on hand as a matter of glorified pest control of whatever Everfree monsters wander close enough to possibly bother her.

tl;dr: Nightmare Moon doesn't care about anybody but herself - therefore she would be a terrible ruler.

Do they have to be MLPForums posts? Or ones predating it in other places?

I guess you gotta face it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HU4e4QWSPFE

Personally, I'm a fan of mashed, with fried onion, butter and sour cream.

I wish it was available on Google Play or something else that's digital, not subscription-based and not iTunes.

cushy day job

I see what you did there. {wink}

"Okay, so if I understand correctly...."

He held up a hand and started ticking off his fingers.

"You're from the past, there's a prophecy or prediction about this exact thing but since you interfered, the prophecy is going off the rails so now you're not sure what's going to happen or what needs to happen in order to fix it."

He tilted his head at chanting Zhu.

"Was that so hard?"

Oyyy, more crises?!

Or just an extension of the current one?

Can't watch yet! So much envy! Can't type long sentences!

I know X-rays don't work that way shutup shutup shutup!

{also what's causing the winds?}