“On Care-a-Lot Station”
Jul. 3rd, 2022 07:53 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
joshuazelinskyThere is an alternate universe where David Weber writes fanfic. In that alternate universe, stories combining My Little Pony and Care Bears are common. Here are three excerpts from one of those stories.
Excerpt One:
As Twilight Sparkle walked up to the Care-a-Lot castle, she noticed the substantial differences in design compared to Equestrian cloud fortresses. The fortress suffered the same basic architectural difficulties in making a substantial fortress set in a cloud environment. However, it was clear that the bears had not substantially considered an attack from below the cloud layer itself. While for now the bears were potential allies, this was a major defensive flaw, and likely showed deeper flaws in their operational and doctrinal thinking. Twilight Sparkle gave a toss of her mane. If negotiations worked out well, she and the military advisors were going to have their work cut out for them.
Excerpt two:
The new treaty between Equestria and Care-a-Lot did not come without its detractors, particularly where the free trade provisions were concerned. At first, the main trade from Equestria was in the form of apple ciders, and various other apple products, which the bears were unable to grow in their cloud city. Initially, this heightened demand resulted in an increase in the cost of cider in Equestria, and the resulting protests should have been easier to predict. Unfortunately, despite Queen Celestia being functionally an absolute monarch with a set of advisers, by long-term tradition, the level of direct intervention by the Queen was small. Moreover, in practice there was a substantial lack of economic analysts within the actual Equestrian government. While Twilight Sparkle was a skilled mage and a good negotiator, she had simply not considered what an immediate inflow of goods would do without any stabilizing steps. The price fluctuations did eventually subside, and new trade resulted in other goods reducing in price, but in the short term it combined with larger unhappiness about the government, and larger protests started to erupt, with some turning decidedly unfriendly. Of course, it would not be until months later, that the real motivator behind the most serious protests would be uncovered.
Excerpt three:
Discord laughed scornfully as the bears lined up.
“We’ve been through this before. Your weak, mortal, magic can’t make me care, except insofar as I already care about having fun. Your pitiful finite minds simply can’t channel a level of power remotely close to anything which would have any substantial impact on my cognition.”
“Care-Bear-Stare!” shouted the bears. And Discord very quickly found that he had failed to notice four critical changes since his last encounter with the bears, one of which had led to the other three.
Under the thaumaturgical-sharing portions of the Equestria-Care-a-Lot treaty, Twilight Sparkle as well as other, even more skilled mages, had worked with the Care Bears to improve the focus of their stare. While Twilight had had serious ethical reservations about what was functionally a mind-control weapon, she followed her instructions from Celestia in optimizing it as much as possible. This resulted in the three major changes to the stare itself.
First, Equestrian arcanics had been used to enhance the arcane lens the bears used on their chests, resulting in tighter, narrower beams with longer range. Second, Equestrian mages had developed a better handling of the resonance between beam segments, allowing the different segments of the beam to more effectively join together. Third, the Equestrian’s development of extended friendship with the bears, resulted in the bears having more active mana able to push into their stares, since in a very literal sense, Friendship is Magic.
In fact, there was an additional fifth change, which to some extent Discord was lucky had not yet been implemented. Twilight Sparkle had hit upon the idea of what she had dubbed caring-pods, separate magically charged levitating magical pods which could store their own care-energy components, and then be released right before a stare. The pods were single use items, and would rely on raw magical power rather than the emotional subtlety of a true bear’s stare, but the sheer energy involved would help make up for that. Properly handled the pods might triple or even more the effectiveness of a stare. However, constructing the pods on a large scale had proven difficult, and the fact that pods needed to be then harmonized with individual bears for charging had so far kept them from large-scale implementation.
But from Discord’s perspective, the lack of pods did not make a difference. He found himself quickly overwhelmed by the sheer strength of the stare, made from a distance he would have expected the stare barely able to impact a mortal being. He found himself caring all of a sudden about everything. He cared about the ponies down below, and the unicorns and alicorns. He cared about the worms in some of the apples. He cared about life on distant planets, and even life on planets so distant they were about to be beyond reach due to the ever expanding nature of the universe passing them outside Equestria’s lightcone. And he found himself caring about the Care Bears a lot, which of course, was the true primary goal of the weapon.
Excerpt One:
As Twilight Sparkle walked up to the Care-a-Lot castle, she noticed the substantial differences in design compared to Equestrian cloud fortresses. The fortress suffered the same basic architectural difficulties in making a substantial fortress set in a cloud environment. However, it was clear that the bears had not substantially considered an attack from below the cloud layer itself. While for now the bears were potential allies, this was a major defensive flaw, and likely showed deeper flaws in their operational and doctrinal thinking. Twilight Sparkle gave a toss of her mane. If negotiations worked out well, she and the military advisors were going to have their work cut out for them.
Excerpt two:
The new treaty between Equestria and Care-a-Lot did not come without its detractors, particularly where the free trade provisions were concerned. At first, the main trade from Equestria was in the form of apple ciders, and various other apple products, which the bears were unable to grow in their cloud city. Initially, this heightened demand resulted in an increase in the cost of cider in Equestria, and the resulting protests should have been easier to predict. Unfortunately, despite Queen Celestia being functionally an absolute monarch with a set of advisers, by long-term tradition, the level of direct intervention by the Queen was small. Moreover, in practice there was a substantial lack of economic analysts within the actual Equestrian government. While Twilight Sparkle was a skilled mage and a good negotiator, she had simply not considered what an immediate inflow of goods would do without any stabilizing steps. The price fluctuations did eventually subside, and new trade resulted in other goods reducing in price, but in the short term it combined with larger unhappiness about the government, and larger protests started to erupt, with some turning decidedly unfriendly. Of course, it would not be until months later, that the real motivator behind the most serious protests would be uncovered.
Excerpt three:
Discord laughed scornfully as the bears lined up.
“We’ve been through this before. Your weak, mortal, magic can’t make me care, except insofar as I already care about having fun. Your pitiful finite minds simply can’t channel a level of power remotely close to anything which would have any substantial impact on my cognition.”
“Care-Bear-Stare!” shouted the bears. And Discord very quickly found that he had failed to notice four critical changes since his last encounter with the bears, one of which had led to the other three.
Under the thaumaturgical-sharing portions of the Equestria-Care-a-Lot treaty, Twilight Sparkle as well as other, even more skilled mages, had worked with the Care Bears to improve the focus of their stare. While Twilight had had serious ethical reservations about what was functionally a mind-control weapon, she followed her instructions from Celestia in optimizing it as much as possible. This resulted in the three major changes to the stare itself.
First, Equestrian arcanics had been used to enhance the arcane lens the bears used on their chests, resulting in tighter, narrower beams with longer range. Second, Equestrian mages had developed a better handling of the resonance between beam segments, allowing the different segments of the beam to more effectively join together. Third, the Equestrian’s development of extended friendship with the bears, resulted in the bears having more active mana able to push into their stares, since in a very literal sense, Friendship is Magic.
In fact, there was an additional fifth change, which to some extent Discord was lucky had not yet been implemented. Twilight Sparkle had hit upon the idea of what she had dubbed caring-pods, separate magically charged levitating magical pods which could store their own care-energy components, and then be released right before a stare. The pods were single use items, and would rely on raw magical power rather than the emotional subtlety of a true bear’s stare, but the sheer energy involved would help make up for that. Properly handled the pods might triple or even more the effectiveness of a stare. However, constructing the pods on a large scale had proven difficult, and the fact that pods needed to be then harmonized with individual bears for charging had so far kept them from large-scale implementation.
But from Discord’s perspective, the lack of pods did not make a difference. He found himself quickly overwhelmed by the sheer strength of the stare, made from a distance he would have expected the stare barely able to impact a mortal being. He found himself caring all of a sudden about everything. He cared about the ponies down below, and the unicorns and alicorns. He cared about the worms in some of the apples. He cared about life on distant planets, and even life on planets so distant they were about to be beyond reach due to the ever expanding nature of the universe passing them outside Equestria’s lightcone. And he found himself caring about the Care Bears a lot, which of course, was the true primary goal of the weapon.
