You guys are making an incorrect assumption in the idea that something like Discord even CAN die. We don't know how that pans out or how much anything will stick here seeing these may very well be similarly powerful entities with only a small fraction of themselves in play.
Illuminating Invitation (MLP: FiM AU)
- Thread starter Alivaril
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Roadie
A plate full of blins and a cat nearby.
I suspect this is also an oblique reference to the, let's call it "less-than-great" ending of MLP:FiM season 9, which effectively rejects the basic morals of the series and is all the result of Discord just stringing people along the entire time in order to humiliate the villains of the piece.
The writer of the book on Outsiders Shimmer referenced seems to think Discord is a much less powerful being than an Outsider.
Mind you, this source is uh, unreliable to me given the lunacy of the topic of their work.
To play Devils Advocate then, Voice is currently and has been interfering in how things play out. Both by keeping Sunset in play and by preventing Discord from coming back, and she is actively working to interfere even more given her actions with Flighty. If there is a tolerance level for harmony then Voice is already doing its best to test it.
How so? Voice hasn't shown anything canon Discord can't do by snapping his fingers.
In fact, Discord's reality-warping has pretty much no known limits, while Voice is self-admitedly small potatoes when it comes to beings in its weight class, so.
Enthusiast#117
This is not the Profile you are looking for
- Location
- United States
Just altering the future isn't the kind of interference I think Harmony is watching for. I think it cares more about things that cause widespread disharmony, or that sabotage the structures it uses to keep things going smoothly.
Like killing an alicorn, or interfering with cutie mark bestowal, or burning down it's tree, instigating assorted types of widespread suffering, etc...
On the grand scale, Sunset's course change hasn't really rippled out to affect things much yet. So long as she isn't on course to drive Celestia or Cadance to drink and an early grave, I don't think Harmony really cares about modifying its plans for her. If it couldn't tolerate sudden course changes, there would be a lot more emphasis on one's inescapable Fate.
Discord seems to have been a problem that Harmony was hoping to someday solve. So long as he isn't replaced with a worse problem, I imagine his removal is only important insofar as the method used grants insight into what type of being Voice is.
Flighty does seem to be working herself up over this, but nothing Voice has done with regards to her has been particularly objectionable. Nothing beyond the pale at least.
- Location
- Somewhere and Nowhere in a state of super-position
Yeah I think it's Discord.
I also think it's far too early to let him out: Sunset might be getting better, but she's still in the same mental neighborhood she was when she summoned Voice. I'd be terrified of her coming into contact with the Alicorn Amulet, let alone letting Discord out to weaponize her.
fictionfan
Please sir, may I have some Meows?
- Location
- Tempe, AZ
Even if it was a credible source and the book's speculation was correct, being a small fragment of a powerful outsider doesn't mean he's weaker than a weak outsider IMO ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
Going by feats, canon Discord is no joke even by the standards of outsiders tbh, and that's just the supposed 'fragment'...
Being a "true" outsider isn't really a power thing.
Instead, it appears to relate to how "native" you are to the world. Discord deals in chaos, and chaos is seemingly a native part of the world. Making Discord not an outsider basically by definition.
Mgunh1
Not an AI, honest!
- Location
- Northern Luna Base, Module 5, Sublevel 15
Y'know, it has always been my opinion that someone should explain the concept of a Trickster God/Spirit and how their role is supposed to work to Discord.
Because the idea that he gets to go around messing with individuals so long as he gives them a out clause and a lesson to learn and people would be (mostly) ok with it so long as all the chaos goes back to normal afterwards? I have the feeling that would be right up his (post-reform) alley.
It is almost like that was what he was meant to be in season 9 but they dropped the ball, in my opinion at least.
Because the idea that he gets to go around messing with individuals so long as he gives them a out clause and a lesson to learn and people would be (mostly) ok with it so long as all the chaos goes back to normal afterwards? I have the feeling that would be right up his (post-reform) alley.
It is almost like that was what he was meant to be in season 9 but they dropped the ball, in my opinion at least.
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serra2
Himouto! Sylvanas-chan
Man, Flighty is going to have such a bad time. Sunset is absolutely the person who would introduce her to all the members of her family, and also provide tutoring and opportunities to use her skills, and Flighty will be sitting there thinking that the only reason this is happening is because of the deal she cut.
- Location
- OK
tbh, I think if Discord is being "written out" of the story, that's a major mistake on the part of the author. For a lot of reasons.
- Voice has an aversion to extinguishing stories, and as mentioned before, they explicitly ascribe a story to Discord.
- It's not entirely clear who shakes out on the power scale, between Discord, and Voice, and with Harmony meddling as well no less.
- Voice had no reason to interfere here, from a doylistic perspective, the author could have just not included Discord, and never mentioned him beyond what is needed.
- Why now? It wasn't his "canon" time to emerge, and he only starts to break free once chaos happens right in front of him, not in general. The author would have had to go out of their way to have him escape here
- Why at all? Voice is atemporal. The idea that they thought he would "swallow everyone's stories" is fleeting and temporary, at best, with the Elements of Harmony chugging along their prophetic rails.
Everyone's saying that they don't like discord being written out but I have to say I agree with the discision. Any role he could play without changing the entire tone of the story is already taken by Voice and its not like he would be relevant for another 15-20 years anyways so this is just a good way to deal with a potential problem
- Location
- OK
I specifically don't like him being written out instead of just ignoring him.
I do have to agree that it's strange to explicitly call out sealing Discord away in this way. I also would've expected it to just not come up at all. Just as how we can assume that changelings aren't really important right now even though they exist, Discord could just not be important even though he exists. It could've also been a vague background issue of "why are the gardens weird" for like a decade (in-universe) before he finally escapes, after Sunset's ascension and the return of Luna.
That in turn makes me think that this is meant to suggest that the point of that section is that Voice is acting weird. Explicitly adding a backup anchor in Flighty Flame and giving her physical goods in exchange, actively eliminating a potential opponent when they're still a long way off from actually being a problem, it's all quite unusual and doesn't really fit with Voice as we know it. More importantly, Sunset might be able to notice that something in the gardens has changed, which she will definitely find quite suspicious if it's a massive shift in the emotional/magic background over such a short amount of time. What this is building to, I don't know, but it's my best guess.
On the other hand, I think Alivaril doesn't really plan things out too much. Her writing is very fun and high quality, but seems to rarely have the foreshadowing and complex plots of some authors and instead focuses more on slice-of-life and making sure each scene works well individually (without outright contradicting what has come before).
That in turn makes me think that this is meant to suggest that the point of that section is that Voice is acting weird. Explicitly adding a backup anchor in Flighty Flame and giving her physical goods in exchange, actively eliminating a potential opponent when they're still a long way off from actually being a problem, it's all quite unusual and doesn't really fit with Voice as we know it. More importantly, Sunset might be able to notice that something in the gardens has changed, which she will definitely find quite suspicious if it's a massive shift in the emotional/magic background over such a short amount of time. What this is building to, I don't know, but it's my best guess.
On the other hand, I think Alivaril doesn't really plan things out too much. Her writing is very fun and high quality, but seems to rarely have the foreshadowing and complex plots of some authors and instead focuses more on slice-of-life and making sure each scene works well individually (without outright contradicting what has come before).
Alivaril
On a magically-deficient journey of self-discovery
- Location
- A single human dimension
- Pronouns
- She/Her
This is normally true, but part of why I've been able to write so much of this is that I did actually plan things out this time; heck, I'm sitting on a song I won't be able to use for months! So there will definitely be a policy change in my writing going forward.
Man so much sympathy for a unrepentant mass murderer. Discord destroyed pony civilization and likely others and created all sorts of pony eating monsters which still plague the land.
The only reason the sisters were crowned as the unifying rulers of the three pony tribes was his apparent death at their hooves.
The only reason the sisters were crowned as the unifying rulers of the three pony tribes was his apparent death at their hooves.
- Location
- Oklahoma
- Voice loves stories and doesn't want to extinguish them, but when its a choice between that and letting all the other stories be subsumed...
- I'm not sure what the point of this point is. What does powerscaling have to do with Voice preemptively taking care of a problem?
- Sure, they could have. But people were already speculating about Discord after the garden scene, and he is a major facet of the setting- explicitly removing him clears things up.
- Why not now? Why wait? Voice saw the writing on the wall and took care of it immediately.
- I feel like this is pretty heavily missing the point of Voice. They are exceedingly interested in the 'fleeting and temporary' stories of mortals- that's their entire motivation. Of course they would take exception to something that was going to consume the stories they love.
serra2
Himouto! Sylvanas-chan
See literally almost every post in this thread since the last chapter.
In that case Voice's actions have backfired a wee bit.
- Location
- OK
- The power to extinguish Discord is equidistant to the power needed to depower him or defang him. One is -1 Stories, the other is +-0 Stories.
- If Voice has the kind of power needed to remove Discord from the equation, they have the power to do things more in line with their motives.
- Why would the author invent a potential problem that didn't have to exist and could have safely been ignored, only to remove it with no fascinating resolution, conflict, or really, anything intriguing at all?
- Why would Voice notice now, and not the exact instant they came into the world? And if they didn't know, why did they find out? Pure chance? Eldritch Abominations don't really do "coincidence". And if they did know, why act now, when they know enough to know when there would be an issue, and act at their leisure? There was no indication that they were on a time crunch.
- The issue of Discord is fleeting and temporary, as in, it presumably would have been solved without Voice's intervention, which they often minimize, outside of narrow circumstances. This is out of character for the normally conservative and patient Voice, whose view of time is very casual and unstressed at best.
- Delete/Ban Discord
- Right this minute
- Unprompted
It doesn't make sense, and it's not even the fun kind of not-making-sense.