BV 3.3 - Golden Age of Apocalypse - Book III: Legacies

So yeah, nothing happens.

 

 

 

 

It's already shit.

 

Last time on GAOA: a psychic butterfly mind-controls Sunset into wanting to fuck Psycho Ponk, and Ponk is too horny to notice anything's wrong until four hours later, at which point they're 95% of the way through a sex scene.

 

Now it's tomorrow, and shit's fucked. Sunset has nightmares about being raped. Ponk has nightmares about raping Sunset and being inducted into the MCDRC. Sunset is up all night vomiting due to the butterfly's venom. This isn't even the bad part.

 

The authors have decided that Ponk Did Nothing Wrong. There was just no way she could have known, during those hours of dancing and making out, that Sunset was an empty shell with no control over her actions. Ponk shouldn't blame herself - she's just as much the victim as Sunset is.

 

All these things are TRUE FACTS. You can tell that they're TRUE FACTS because every character agrees with them wholeheartedly. The only exception is Human Twilight, who is BAD AND WRONG. You can tell she's BAD AND WRONG because the authors tell her that she is through the mouths of every other character in the fic. Fortunately, she recants after a chapter and a half: she has no reason to hate Ponk for nearly raping her sister, and she hopes to overcome this irrational bias eventually.

 

When I say everyone agrees, I do mean everyone. Even Sunset's parents (all three of them) agree that Ponk Did Nothing Wrong. Celestia hasn't even visited her yet - "She thought it would be best to talk to the other victim in this situation", instead.

 

 

In other news

 

 

 

Berry Sue's supposed to clean up the mind-control butterfly cocoons in the castle's main ballroom. But, surprise! Mind-control butterflies are essential to the ecology of the Dragonlands. So Berry Sue halts all efforts to contain this raging biohazard, lest the dragon ambassador complain to Celestia.

 

Sunset tells Ponk they need a break. Ponk conspicuously fails to lose her shit over this clear rejection of her worth as a human being. I guess she knows the authors are as dedicated to this ship as she is, so she'll no doubt be getting [spoiler]back[/spoiler] into Sunset's pants before too long.

 

Ponk tries sparring with AJ. AJ is a tae kwon do black-belt, while Ponk has never taken a martial arts class in her life. Ponk wins, presumably thanks to Swordbearer hax. Later, she does the same to some actual royal guards.

 

Blueblood/Octavia is going places. Shame Pony Octavia seems not to be interested—I was hoping for another exceptionally wacky love triangle. Instead we just get a regular love triangle with some noble's bratty daughter, Heatherfield.

 

The coronation happens. It's utterly boring. Out of the 714 different conspiracies that have been built up over the past 250,000 words, not a single one did a single thing.

 

Various characters suddenly realize they have plot threads to wrap up before BV3 ends.

 

At the reception afterward, Cadance and Shining Armor bully Divine Right into asking Pony Twilight for a dance. That ship is also going places, apparently.

 

Nearly the entire cult is inside the castle at this point. Midway through the reception, Barkeep gives the order to enact their evil plan: trigger the mind-control butterflies to hatch, and unleash them on the reception. Notice how, despite having months to prepare, their best plan is something they could only have made up in the past 24 hours.

 

There are hints in 7-8 that the authors have done something mind-bogglingly stupid, but it'll take a few more chapters to be sure.

 

 

 

Previously on GAOA:

 

Shit gets complicated, so I drew you this helpful diagram: https://u.smutty.horse/lwvwrpvxhnp.png

 

 

 

This week there's some good news, for once.

 

Several chapters ago, it suddenly came out that both Berry Sue and the Covenant believe that Sunset is a descendant of Sombra and the fourth scion. Their evidence:

 

Now, that didn't look so good for my theory that Human Octavia is the fourth scion. The evidence for that one:

 

This left the question: did Berry Sue and the Covenant both get the idiot ball all of the sudden? Or are we about to get some nicredibly contrived retcon bullshit? And before you say it's obviously option 1, remember:

This series has long since proved that when it comes to retcons, no stretch is too far.

 

But, in a shocking twist, this week the authors did NOT go full retard. It's confirmed: Musical Allegra was pregnant when she escaped through the mirror to earth. That child, the son of Sombra, was Octavia's direct ancestor.

 

Also, Octavia's evil vanishing twin Melody, given life as Octavia's alter ego thanks to Sunset's healing magic in 7DSJ1, draws on the power of the amulet to take control of Octavia's body and forcibly transform her into a pony.

 

 

 

Post-coronation, Ponk's in the hospital in stable condition after being stabbed in the heart twice. However, the combination of head trauma and massive blood loss means she's currently in a coma, and nobody's sure when she'll wake up. Sunset spends a while moping, because somehow "it's all my fault" that Ponk ran off on her own and picked a fight with a trained assassin.

 

The Covenant now has everything they need for Sombra's resurrection: the mirror, the Alicorn Amulet, and all four scions. They almost fucked up due to their inexplicable belief that Sunset was the fourth scion, but Corner Shot accidentally kidnapped the right person (Human Octavia) anyway. Octavia got partially PTFG'd by her evil alter ego Melody, but the process was interrupted and now she's stuck as some kind of satyr abomination.

 

Corner Shot asks Tiny Dynamine [spoiler]which is still the worst pony name I've ever seen[/spoiler] about the ritual, and it turns out Dynamine has been bullshitting everyone the entire time. Nobody except herself and maybe Neon Lux knows what the ritual will actually do. Also, Corner Shot realizes that the guys who sent her to kill her her own dad for the lulz don't make for the best allies.

 

The tripfriends, WTF, and the Valanx all parachute from an airship to assault the Covenant's base. Blueblood also jumps, but without a parachute, because even though his main job is pretending to fuck gold-diggers, he still has time to keep up his training in unicorn black-ops badassery. The 3F + WTF are there because it's their job, Blueblood is there because he wants to bang Human Octavia, and the Valanx is there because it's a really cool truck.

 

 

 

The ride never ends

 

The tripfriends, Edgelord, Blueblood, and WTF drive the Valanx towards the Covenant base, guided by Blueblood's "strand of love", which points to his true love, Human Octavia. The strand guides them to a hidden portal leading to the Covenant's base, even though the portal is miles from the actual base where Octavia is being held (I ain't gotta explain shit). The tripfriends blast open the entrance and get ready to move.

 

Now the plot goes on hold for 10,000 words so the M6 + 8M8 can do some kind of goodwill tour. The first order of business is to match up the six M6, the six remaining 8M8 [spoiler]Octavia's locked up in the Covenant base, and Ponk's in a coma[/spoiler], the six members of the SIREN Advanced Training Group, and the six cities where ponies are rioting and trying to defund Celestia. Naturally, every character must give explicit justification their decisions. Then, each of the six groups gets a 1000-word scene in transit to their chosen city.

 

For the record, the results are:

Hope you're ready for multiple chapters of 80% filler, because most likely the only one of these that actually matters is Fillydelphia, where Sunset hopes to visit her grandma's museum and personal library ([spoiler]grandma = Faust[/spoiler]).

 

Oh yeah, and Corner Shot is about ready to turn on the Covenant, which would leave them with 4/4 scions in rebellion (or 3/4 in rebellion and 1/4 - Octavia - completely insane).

 

 

 

GAOA continues to baffle.

 

 

This list is not in chronological order, because linear storytelling is for scrubs. A real pro just tags every scene with the date and time when it begins. Currently we're up to about a 40-hour gap between the pastmost storyline (the raid, standing at 3:20 AM, 45th day of Spring) and the futuremost (pony RD and Moonblazer at the army base, 7:00 PM, 46th of Spring).

 

 

 

BlueBastard's clearly been taking lessons.

 

The scions bust out of the Covenant's dungeon, but the first three are quickly subdued in the ritual chamber, and the fourth (Octavia) ends up hiding in a box in the kitchen. A couple cultists track down Octavia, but she taps into Melody's dark magic and blows them up with a sonic screech.

 

The tripfriends are gunning down cultists all over the base, so it's now or never for the Sombra resurrection ritual. But the ritual's fake, invented by Tiny Dynamine, who was actually Queen Chrysalis the whole time. She's out for revenge against Sombra, and has been working in secret to crush his legacy. She used the cult to gather the scions so she can kill them, and now they're all accounted for, she can destroy the cult as well (at least, the 20% of the cult that's not changeling drones). She tops off her villainous monologue by snapping Father Lux's neck.

 

(Relevant backstory: as described in the Edginomicon, Chrysalis was originally Crisalide della Lucca, an Italian noble girl who Cavalcanti traded to Sombra. He raped her to death (she got better) and did various magical experiments on her, eventually turning her into the first changeling queen. During the war, he ran out of mind control potions, and she got loose, so she wasn't caught up in the banishment of the Crystal Empire.)

 

Blueblood and WTF find Octavia, but stumble straight into the ritual chamber with her in tow, just as Chrysalis is getting ready to start killing scions. Chrysalis grabs the Alicorn Amulet, puts it on, and every single changeling promptly has a seizure.

 

Turns out, when Dynamine grabbed the Amulet during Octavia's forced transformation, it came away with Melody stuck inside. Now Melody wants Chrysalis's body. And, because everything's better with three people involved, all this bullshit somehow wakes up another personality, who speaks Italian and thus is presumably Crisalide (but who the fuck knows for sure).

 

Surprise, bitches!

 

 

 

The tripfriends finish operating, recovering Berry Sue, Lockbox, and Satyrtavia, and capturing Corner Shot and Chrysalis. All the changelings and the three real cultists die in a magic mirror meltdown. Then a bunch of dumb shit happens.

 

 

With both the main plot and the bizarre last-minute side plot now wrapped up, it seems GAOA will soon be reaching it end. (I expect Celestia's impeachment to drag on into BV4.)

 

 

 

Last week's GAOA chapter was inexplicably published as a side story.

 

A girl from some backwater village is sent by Queen Twilight to defeat the nefarious Rector Hons in the name of the goddess.

 

Turns out the whole thing was some kind of acid-trip coma dream as Psycho Ponk unfortunately fails to die in the pony hospital. Now that Ponk's mostly recovered, I guess, Faust and The Megan have a chat with her about swordbearer shit. Ponk's all-in, of course - anything for Sunny. Faust gives Ponk her sword, Rosegarden, which she promptly renames to Boop (I guess even this psycho still remembers how to Ponk). Then she wakes up, with Sunset at her bedside.

 

 

 

Every major storyline is done (even the last-minute bonus subplot), but GAOA shows no sign of actually ending.

 

Highfalutin' teleports Ferrytwist to Canterlot to bust Barkeep out of jail and send him to kill Tumblehome. This works, but only because nobody bothered to tell Barkeep that the entire cult was made of changelings.

 

Human Celestia walks in on Barkeep before he gets away, so he takes her hostage. This brand-new crisis goes on for a chapter or so, until Crisalide (who also broke out of jail after seeing Ferrytwist go by) shows up in the guise of the oracle, Tiny Dynamine, and convinces Barkeep to surrender. Crisalide's jailbreak was just for funsies, and she lets the guard take her back to her cell afterward.

 

My favorite little psycho is alive and Ponking, thanks to her ever-more-powerful Swordbearer hax. But before she can get back to her regular job of sexually harrassing Sunset, she has to angst for a while about whether she's even still human, now that she has all these ridiculous superpowers. Scilight, who has long since forgiven Ponk for raping Sunset, cheers her up.

 

The impeachment proceedings against "Sleepy Celestia" are ongoing, led by Riven Oak. (He has demeaning nicknames for everypony, just like le orange man.) But "Fancy Pants-on-Head" has been running a strong defense, so he's looking for additional options, such as going after Twilight. Everyone on the impeachment team is blatantly, hilariously corrupt (in cahoots with Highfalutin' and Tumblehome (RIP)) and not even trying to pretend otherwise.

 

As a reminder, it has been five full chapters (about 42,000 words) since the climactic battle that ended the scion/Covenant plotline, which was the main plotline of all of GAOA. I really hope BlueBastard isn't aiming to challenge Shinzakura's record for longest epilogue, which currently stands at 171,504 words (7DSJ5).

 

 

 

Once upon a time, there was a man who just wanted to write a story about Sunset Shimmer spending seven days in Equestria. But his story needed a prologue and an epilogue, so he asked his friend for help. His friend, being an honest-to-goodness crazy person, wrote hundreds of thousands of words of extraneous bullshit, far exceeding the length of the main story, all full of convoluted plotlines and obscure side characters with no relevance to the story itself.

 

Then, five years later, they did it all again, with their roles reversed.

 

It has been SEVEN chapters (55,000 words) since the main plot finished. The end is nowhere in sight, and we're charging headlong into 7DSJ Book 4 "what is this story even about anymore" territory.

 

White pony bad! [impeachment intensifies] The badguys' new plan is to court-martial Pony Divine Right for not saving the world from butterflies, even though he wasn't even on duty that night. The point is to make Twilight unhappy (everyone in the world ships her and DR), which will then make Celestia unhappy. Celestia, unhappy, puts on her serious hat and vows to "introduce Parliament to real politics".

 

Human Celestia develops an inexplicable obsession with adopting Crisalide. Shining Armor says it's not mind control, so this is totally fine and reasonable. Princess Luna's only concern is whether the Equestrian public will be okay with Chrysalis getting off scot-free after all the awful things she's done. (Luna getting off scot-free was totally different, because of reasons.)

 

Pony Blueblood gives Human Octavia a magic ring that's been in his family for generations, which turns her pony legs back to normal (and also drains her life force if she wears it too long). Then he confesses his undying love for her, and mentions he got a new job working for Sunset on earth. Octavia thinks about it for a minute, then decides that she's totally fine with dating the AU version of the guy who tried to rape her.

 

Why

 

 

 

I don't even know what's happening any more

 

 

What is even the point

 

 

 

It's not dead, I promise

 

It's time for the court-martial and/or impeachment trial of Prince Captain Divine Right (Pony Edition) at Nobility House. (DR is the captain of Princess Twilight's Friendship Guard, and also her coltfriend.) The charges are bullshit but Marquis Riven Oak has set this up as a way to strike at the princesses in advance of Celestia's own impeachment trial, which is the first step in his plan to become king (and an alicorn too, if he can).

 

Celestia starts by dismissing the case, the trial turns into a huge shouting match, and we get four rounds of this:

They call a recess at this point, but Celestia doesn't bother coming back afterward. She just sends Kibbitz to announce that I'M OUT, BITCHES, Luna is now Queen of All Cosmos, parliament is dissolved until all the nobles have sworn fealty to Equestria and Queen Luna, and by the way, Divine Right's case is still dismissed.

 

Celestia didn't bother to tell Luna about this plan in advance. The actual purpose of the recess is to fill her in and make sure she agrees to it. You'd think she would have explained it last night, you know, when Luna walked in on Celestia and Faust discussing this exact plot. But it's far more dramatic for Celestia to give an impassioned, last-minute speech about how she just wants to be a teacher.

 

The main plot is over, and now the replacement main plot is over too, so GAOA as a whole should be ending some time within the next 3 to 6,000 months.

 

 

Yeah, I don't really get it. The eventual solution (making Luna queen) was her plan all along, as far as I can tell, so I don't see why she didn't just get to it. She makes this big speech about how the nobility is full of corruption, which she could have just ended with "and that's why I'm dissolving the parliament and setting up my sister as supreme leader". But of course it's more dramatic if it looks like she's flying by the seat of her pants. (Shinzakura wrote this particular chapter, in case it wasn't obvious.)

 

 

 

I lost my notes on chapter 29 and I'll be damned if I'm going to reread the whole thing. I'm pretty sure nothing interesting happened anyway.

 

In chapter 30, Sunset, the human M6, satyr Octavia, Mi Amore Cadenza (Esquire), Shining Armor, Night Light, Twilight Velvet, the tripfriends, the ATG, Admiral Edgelord, Superintendent Celestia, Principal Luna, Crisalide della Lucca, Grizelda Greatsword-Martinez, and Blueblood all depart for Earth through the mirror.

 

Some bad guys meet up in a bathroom. Chrysoberyl swears revenge against her half-sister Berry Sue. Skystreak swears revenge against Sunset. Sommerset reveals herself to be Starlight Glimmer and swears revenge against pony Twilight Sparkle. Melody (who's still a necklace) swears revenge against human Octavia. These are all on the pony side of the mirror, by the way, so at least two of them are going to have an awful hard time getting at their targets.

 

On the human side of the mirror, pony Celestia is on "vacation" with a few dozen of her Hooves. Sunbutt being Sunbutt, there's an ulterior motive: her goal is to marry off as many Hooves as possible to unsuspecting humans, as one part retirement plan (the mirror turns a 73-year-old sirens into 23-year-old nohooves) and one part political scheme (to "lay the groundwork for a grander alliance" with humanity in the future). [spoiler]Is this something normies actually do? Spend a week at an Indonesian resort and bring some random chick home with you? Well, it takes all sorts, I guess.[/spoiler] Anyway, just don't think about the passports and it makes perfect sense.

 

Finally, an anonymous Japanese girl hopes the Chīkyū no Megami ("Goddess of Earth") will save her from the Ordo Duodecim. But the Grandmaster already knows and is planning some kind of trap, the first step in his plan to destroy Sunset Shimmer.

 

IT'S FINALLY FINISHED. GAOA IS DEAD, LONG LIVE THE BERYLVERSE

[spoiler]WIZARD WAR SOON[/spoiler]