"The past won't know what hit it!" And neither will your brain...
A My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic Round Robin fanfic by Insaneponyauthor, and a loose sequel to Tealove's Steamy Adventure.
Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon think history class is boring, so they do the only logical thing: get their own time machine and go back to change the past. But they wind up in the future instead. And from that moment forward (and backward), nothing goes according to their or anyone else's plan.
A drink of memory-enhancing tea leads to a showdown in a storehouse of magickal artifacts. A meeting with their time-displaced selves reveals a horrible truth about Diamond and Silver's future (and incredibly irritates Twilight Sparkle). A revolution in the ancient Earth Pony kingdom puts the power to destroy all of reality into the hooves of a lunatic. The secret of Diamond and Silver's destiny gives them a power that just might save them... or kill them. And whether they're in the future, the past, or the halls of the multiversal time police, the two fillies keep crossing paths with a mysterious zebra with unclear motives.
Will the two spoiled brats be able to fix the time stream and go home? Will Diamond Tiara ever admit her feelings for Apple Bloom? What is the deal with Baron Zeppeli, anyway? Why is Luna dressed like a pirate? How many licks does it take to get to the center of an entire planet made of candy? Is Zebrew really the most interesting language in the world? No, seriously, what's Baron Zeppeli's deal?
Experience the "Meanwhile..." here
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Meanwhile, yesterday, in the trope examples:
- Aesop Amnesia: Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon eventually come to terms with DT's crush on Apple Bloom, and they even feel guilt over their prior bullying. Yet in the final chapter, they're back to hating AB irrationally.
- All of Time at Once: The repeated use of certain magic damages the fabric of time, to the extent that random portals to various time periods open up, spilling dinosaurs, historical figures, space ships, and other absurdities into the present.
- Anti-Hero: Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon. They begin the story as spoiled bullies, and half their motivation for time traveling is to further torment Apple Bloom. They eventually show their hearts of gold, and a meeting with their future selves shows that they eventually grow out of their brattiness. Even then, Depending on the Author is in full effect.
- Anti-Intellectualism: In the ancient earth pony kingdom, books are illegal. Agents of the king confiscate and bury them.
- Ascended Extra: In the previous story, Baron Zeppeli initially seemed like an important villain, but he disappeared from the narrative without accomplishing anything. He returns here, and his part is at least as big as Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon's.
- Balloon Belly: Alternately played for horror and for laughs. The nihilbog compels the protagonists to eat the candy world they're in. "They'll eat, and eat, and eat until their stomachs explode like a cute-ceañera pinata full of hoof grenades." Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon break free from the mind control, but it's mentioned that there are several alternate timelines where they did die in precisely that way. But then the action skips forward, to after DT and SS have defeated the nihilbog, and they've gained quite a bit of weight: "We… maybe have gotten stuck under the Nihilbog's 'eat the world' mind control for a little bit before we captured him."
- Big Brother Is Watching: Played with. Memoria is a plane of existence where literally every event in the entire multiverse gets recorded for all eternity—and any of the alicorns can see it. When Diamond Tiara points out how creepy that is, Celestia explains that there are so many memories that they're nearly impossible to search through.
- Bilingual Dialogue: Several characters can understand what Lil' Fluffy, Baron Zeppeli's cat, says when he meows. Judging by some of their reactions, Lil' Fluffy has a really dirty mouth.
- Book Ends: The first and last chapters were written by the same guy. Hence why characters who disappear at the beginning of the story suddenly reappear for the finale.
- Bratty Half-Pint: Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon have no qualms about mouthing off to anyone. This even includes telling Princess Luna, "Screw you, princess!"
- Call-Back: Remember all those dangling plot threads from the last story? So did the authors.
- The time machine that kicks off the whole plot is derived from technology left behind after the alien invasion from Derailed. Luna is a pirate here because she was dressed like a pirate in that one.
- The forgotten villains from Tealove's Steamy Adventure get their chance to shine here. The Cutie Mark Crusders' subplot in the present involves them trying to cure Apple Bloom of only speaking in song lyrics. "Colt Skylark" returns, as a member of the Time Police.
- Cardboard Prison: The dungeon that Pudding Head sends Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon to has a secret tunnel out.[Pudding Head said,] "How about this. I'll send you to The Dungeon. The guards say that ponies go in and never come out, but that's just because they don't know about the tunnel (second stone from bottom, far left corner)."
- Carry a Big Stick: Agent Blaze uses a giant hammer to smash down a door.
- Charm Person: The bog spirit can control ponies' minds, at which point he commands them to eat themselves to death.
- Combined Energy Attack: Twilight's final time-fixing spell requires not just her own magic, but Luna's alicorn magic, Zeppeli's zebra magic, Apple Bloom's earth pony magic... and Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon might as well help, too.
- Comically Missing the Point:
- Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon try to time travel to the past. The arrive at a giant city under a dome, with skyscrapers, hovercraft, cyborg ponies, and chrome everywhere. Their reaction:
"Man, Cheerilee was holding out on us!" Silver Spoon kicked the ground. "I woulda payed attention in class if she'd told us the past was this cool!"- Later, an Airplane! reference gets turned on its head:
BZ: Sorry I'm late. There's trouble at the mill.
DT: The mill? What is it?
PH: Wait, let me guess. One of the crossbeams has gone askew!
JB: That's not important right now. The real problem is that with the mill out of commission, our plans will-
DT: No, I mean what is a mill?- When Twilight's metaphor starts to go off the rails:
[Twilight said,] "So you hop in your time machine and go back in time—"
"Wait," Luna interrupted. "How are we going back in time in this metaphor if the tapestry represents time?"
"It's a weave, not a tapestry! Please, try to keep up." - Cool Airship:
- Subverted by Luna's pirate airship. It looks awesome, but it's miserable to ride in because there's no air conditioning. Diamond Tiara feels no remorse over crashing it.
- In the future, Zeppeli's lead zeppelin is even cooler than before, with neon lights and spinning chrome rims.
- Covers Always Lie: Of all the characters and objects crammed into the cover picture, Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon are the only ones that actually show up in the fic itself. The cover doesn't even get the fic's name right.
- Crossover: Turns out Baron Zeppeli is one and the same as the original Baron Zeppeli—he somehow reincarnated as a zebra in Equestria after his death in JoJo's Bizarre Adventure. And Captain Briefs of the Order of Harmony is a Lawyer-Friendly Cameo of Trunks from Dragon Ball.
- Curse Cut Short: Inconsistently used. In the early chapters, everyone who tries to give the idiomatic translation of a particular Zebrew phrase, gets cut off somehow ("Oh, sh-"). But later (in the Whenhouse and Memoria), Diamond Tiara's complaints about "time travel shit" go completely uncensored.
- Depending on the Writer: Baron Zeppeli is the biggest victim, as no consecutive authors seem to agree what side he should be on. One author accidentally turns him into a pony, because he'd never read Tealove's Steamy Adventure and didn't realize Zeppeli was a zebra.
- Deus ex Machina: Since the final villain comes out of freaking nowhere (see Hijacked By Ganon, below), it's only fitting that they get defeated by two heroes who also show up out of freaking nowhere: Future Apple Bloom and the Twilight Sparkle who got separated from DT and SS at the beginning of the story.
- Did I Just Say That Out Loud?:[Diamond Tiara said,] "We want to go back and change history! [...] You know, jazz it up. Make it less boring! Maybe even stop Apple Bloom from making her stupid Cutie Mark Crusader club while we're at it. … Wait, did I say that last part out loud?"
- Doomy Dooms of Doom: When an impending Time Crash looks like it will kill the protagonists, the already-thwarted Big Bad gloats that they're all doomed. Then she just shouts "Doooooooooomed!" over and over, until Twilight muzzles her.
- Dope Slap: At the beginning, Twilight punishes Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon by bonking them on the head with a history book. Not long after, she progresses to bludgeoning them unconscious with that same book.
- Elephant in the Living Room: Used literally. There is an elephant in the Earth Liberation Front's meeting room, and Diamond Tiara wonders why no one says anything about her. The answer is incredibly mundane: everyone else already knows the elephant, and the elephant herself isn't interested in idle chit-chat.
- 11th-Hour Ranger: At the last minute, Diamond and Silver get rescued from the Duchess by Twilight Sparkle and adult Apple Bloom.
- Everyone Has Standards: Diamond Tiara may be bratty and self-centered, but even she thinks that racism is "Not cool."
- Flock of Wolves: At the ELF meeting, a surprising number of members turn out to be time travelers in hiding.JB: Is there anypony here who isn't a time traveler?
JB: …
SC: Ah don't think I've ever time traveled yet. - Foe Romance Subtext: It starts as subtext, with Diamond Tiara lamenting that life is meaningless now that she can't bully Apple Bloom anymore. It becomes text-text when Future Diamond Tiara and Future Apple Bloom reveal that they're married. Present DT, confronted with her future self, tries to deny that she has a crush, but eventually she admits it.
- From Nobody to Nightmare: Pudding Head. In spite of her important position as a double agent, nopony takes her seriously because she's such a loon. But she's "a loon with a god complex"—once she gains the arcane power to enforce her mad whims, she brings entire universes to ruin.
- Future Imperfect: At the start of the story, Baron Zeppeli wants to get revenge for the events of Tealove's Steamy Adventure—but his memories are so muddled that he thinks Coffeehate is his old enemy's name.
- Future Me Scares Me: Grown-up Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon are a bit embarrassed over how jerkish their past selves were. Young DT is confused and grossed out that her future self hooked up with Apple Bloom.
- Gambit Roulette: Thoroughly played with.
- First, Zeppeli proclaims that a series of events he couldn't have possibly predicted was "Exactly according to plan," and one of his underlings asks what the plan could possibly be. Zeppeli admits that he doesn't know.
- Later, it's explained that "Exactly as planned" is actually a Zebrew phrase that just happens to sound like Equestrian. Translated, it actually means, "These matters are very concerning to me."
- Then played straight at the end, when the big bad claims, without a trace of irony, that the entire story was part of their scheme to acquire some powerful magic artifacts and conquer Equestria.
- Genuine Imposter: Silver Spoon pulls off Princess Luna's mask, revealing she's actually... Princess Luna. And Luna can't remember why she was wearing a disguise of herself in the first place.
- "Groundhog Day" Loop: Happens in the mission to the candy world: they had to keep rewinding time and restarting the mission because the entire away team kept dying. Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon are only aware of the most recent loop (and by extension, the audience only sees the loop where they succeed), but the other members accidentally let slip that there were a lot of failed loops.
- Hammerspace: Baron Zeppeli puts the ham in hammerspace when he summons a large chunk of ham to use as a weapon. And when Diamond Tiara grabs her gun, the narration specifically says that she pulled it out of hammerspace.
- The Hat Makes the Man: In the Whenhouse, it's revealed that Baron Zeppeli's top hat is sentient and evil—and it brainwashed Zeppeli into being a villain. The characters lampshade the similarity to Meet the Robinsons.
- Heel–Face Revolving Door: Baron Zeppeli changes sides so many times, your head will spin. Sometimes there's an explanation. (His hat makes him evil! He has an evil twin! Amnesia changed his alignment!) Sometimes he just changes because the author completely misunderstood the previous chapter.
- Here There Were Dragons: Zeppeli claims that Equestria was much more intensely magical in the days before Celestia and Luna's rule."It is merely a product of a bygone age—at least, bygone in our home universe, but alive around us now—one in which the world throbbed with ambient magicks"—Diamond could hear the k—"-before those mares who dared lord themselves over us put as much as they could on their own leash and buried the rest."
- Hijacked by Ganon: Who's the big bad of this story? Pudding Head, drunk on phenomenal cosmic power, wreaking havoc on the multiverse by accident, and apparently connected to the Cultist from the previous story? Baron Zeppeli, hounding our heroes and changing sides every time they turn their backs? Nope. It's the Duchess, Zeppeli's boss from the last fic. She's mentioned here only once before she shows up and reveals that everything was part of her scheme to conquer Equestria.
- The Internet Is for Porn: Baron Zeppeli conquered the future, partly by flooding the Canternet with "limitless access to horn-enhancement popups, incomprehensible phrases placed next to cycling animation, and exotic pornography."
- Junkie Prophet: A downplayed example, but Silver Spoon's dad once drank "too much punch" and gave his daughter a message about grabbing a "lead balloon" by the strings, and the need to "let it go". Years later, SS realizes that his words have literally come true.
- Kill Us Both: To distinguish between the two Zeppelis, Silver Spoon points a gun at them and threatens to shoot, hoping to invoke this reaction. Instead...The Zeppelis exchanged a glance before they answered in unison. "You'll have to shoot both of us, just to be sure."
"Darn it!" Silver said. "That doesn't help at all if you both say it!" - Lame Pun Reaction:[Twilight said,] "A lot of ponies find that [history] really comes alive when they read books like these ones. Books that treat those 'explorers, inventors, and politicians' as characters in a vast story. After all, you can't spell 'history' without 'Hi, story!'"
It took all of Diamond Tiara's self-control to refrain from facehoofing. Oh my goodness, she thought. No wonder she lives in a library. - La Résistance: The Earth Liberation Front (though Pudding Head calls it the Pudding Promotion Committee) seeks to overthrow the oppressive monarchy and establish a representative democracy.
- Last-Minute Hookup: Played for laughs. In the final chapter, Twilight and Baron Zeppeli appear in the same scene for the first time in the whole fic, and immediately reveal that they hooked up, off-screen, and they've been a couple for some time.
- Latex Perfection / Full-Body Disguise: Exaggerated into absurdity. Elderly Future Diamond Tiara is actually Baron Zeppeli (or his clone) in disguise. Who's actually Discord in disguise. Who's actually an unnamed wheelpony in disguise. Who's actually The Duchess in disguise. And, if that wasn't enough, Princess Luna turns out to be... Princess Luna, disguised as herself.
- Leap of Faith: While Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon are dangling from ropes, hanging off a zeppelin flying through a time portal, SS realizes something. She recalls a message from her dad, years ago, and figures out that it was actually a prophecy... that he was telling her to let go of the ropes. DT is naturally reluctant, but SS talks her into letting go. They fall through a weak point in the portal, and land safely in Memoria.
- Level Ate: Puddinghead's apparent lair is in a world made entirely out of sweets. Chocolate roads, chocolate milk rain, candy cane trees, doughnut flowers... and a monster that hypnotizes people into trying to eat it.
- Literal-Minded: A. For example:PH: Can I say just a few words first?
A: I find it unlikely, though I will not rule out the possibility entirely [...] On the basis of prior observed utterances, I predict that if allowed to speak freely, PH would speak a mean of 58 words with a lower 99% confidence bound of 19 words. I believe this justifies my assertion that PH is likely incapable of speaking just a few words. - Loads and Loads of Loading: The cyborg Lil' Fluffy downloads the entire internet and gives the progress report "Loading, please wait...", over and over and over, until it fills an entire screen height.
- Magic 8-Ball: The beverage Remember Tea is used to see the future: anyone who drinks it temporarily remembers their entire lives, including events that haven't happened yet.
- Meanwhile, in the Future…: Parodied. Scene transitions include nonsense like, "Meanwhile, hours in the future, but not many..." and, "Meanwhile, two weeks ago in the present..."
- Metaphorgotten: Twilight explains how a time-mending magic spell works by asking her audience to imagine that time is a weave... and when that weave gets holes, you fix it by jumping in your time machine and going back in time...
- The Mole: Pudding Head, an agent working directly for the earth pony king, but also a member of the resistance.
- Moment Killer: When Twilight and Zeppeli's kiss goes on a little too long, Diamond Tiara tries to wreck the mood. But it backfires:"For crying out loud!" Diamond Tiara shouted. "Get a room, you two!"
Twilight pulled her mouth away from Zeppeli long enough to say "Great idea!" With a flare of magic, the two of them teleported away. - Mythology Gag: A few nods to the pony toys:
- Star Swirl the Bearded (famed unicorn scholar and time traveler) goes in disguise as the toyline-only pony Star Swirl (an earth pony with a pink mane).
- When the Grand Tiara starts glowing with power, the narrator notes "For just a moment, the latter was truly Diamond Dazzled Tiara..." referencing DT's middle name in the toy line.
- Newspaper Dating: Silver Spoon attempts this, but it turns out there are no newspapers in the distant past.
- Noodle Incident: This story is practically a noodle factory. Princess Luna became a pirate in the future... somehow. Diamond Tiara crashed the airship... somehow. She and Silver Spoon get knocked down a peg and stop being such big jerks... in the future, somehow. Zecora and the Cutie Mark Crusaders have an off-screen run-in with something in the Everfree that leaves them singed. And so on.
- Offscreen Romance: Twilight Sparkle's very first scene with Baron Zeppeli—at the end of the fic—establishes that they've been a couple for some months, offscreen.
- The Omniscient Council of Vagueness:
- "Below time", a group of villains takes note of Pudding Head's rise to power, and arrange to deliver a magic artifact to her.
- Just before Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon confront Baron Zeppeli for the last time, two ponies in the Featureless Plane of Disembodied Dialogue talk about how the time has come for DT and SS to seize their fate. They aren't identified, but they're implied to be the future versions of DT and SS.
- One-Steve Limit: Everyone addresses each other by their initials during the ELF meeting, which leads to confusion since there are two members named SS.
- Only Known by Initials:
- JB, leader of the Resistance, is too paranoid to share his full name with anyone.
- The narrator forgets what A's full name is.
- LMDDHLKMAFP's full name is never given because it's absurdly long (even her abbreviation has to be abbreviated!), and she's a Lawyer-Friendly Cameo of someone else's OC anyway.
- Pirate Parrot: Luna the Sky Pirate captain doesn't have a real parrot, but does have a bat dressed like a parrot and trained to talk like a parrot.
- Prophecies Are Always Right: Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon's respective cutie marks are actually the Grand Tiara and the Wayfarer Spoon, powerful magic artifacts. And only DT and SS can unlock their full potential.
- Racial Face Blindness: Referenced when Diamond Tiara points out the physical difference between the real Zeppeli and his impostor. Silver Spoon admits she can't tell the difference, and DT points out, "That's racist, Silver Spoon. Not cool."
- Rage Against the Mentor: Short-lived, but Twilight calls out Luna (and Celestia by extension) over a bit of hypocrisy:"How?!" Princess Luna barely restrained herself from shouting.
[Twilight said,] "I-i-i-it's better if I don't tell you."
Luna scowled at her.
"Oh, come on!" Twilight stamped a hoof. "Like you and your sister have such a great track record of telling me things. Oh, here's an idea! I'll tell you how I just fixed the entire timestream, if you'll give me unlimited access to the big archive of scary monsters that you and your sister banished from Equestria, and that are probably going to come back in my near future! How does that sound?" - Rapid-Fire "No!": Discord offers to explain how he pulled off his latest caper, but Silver Spoon isn't interested. He starts explaining anyway, so SS interrupts with a string of "Nope nope nope nope nope nope nope!"
- Rich Bitch: Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon, of course. DT even admits as much: "I may be a shallow, self-obsessed example of the standard rich bitch archetype..."
- Right-Hand Cat: Lil' Fluffy, Baron Zeppeli's cat. He's also a cyborg who downloaded the entire internet.
- Raygun Gothic: The far future has dome cities, robots, cyborgs, and chrome plating everywhere. Silver jumpsuits are a common outfit, and Ponyville is now known as the Ponytropolis Domeplex.
- Running Gag:
- Twilight hitting Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon with a history book, and DT and SS mistaking the far future for the past, both get a "This joke is getting old!" Lampshade Hanging.
- On a larger scale, this is the third Insaneponyauthor story in a row where a member of the Apple family steals the spotlight during the finale.
- "Save the World" Climax: Initially, Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon just want to muck around in history. But before the first act is over, things escalate until the timestreams of multiple universes are threatened, and DT and SS get roped into saving them. By the climax, the stakes increase until all of existence needs to be saved.
- Script Fic: Most of the story is normal narrative, but it switches to a transcript for the meeting of the Earth Liberation Front.
- Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: Silver Spoon creates a bunch of them while under the influence of the Remember Tea, doing things solely because she foresaw herself doing them. This culminates in a scene where she remembers that she's supposed to remember something important... but she can't remember what it is.
- Shaped Like Itself: The ELF hideout entrance is described as a place that looks like every other place.
- Shout-Out: See here.
- Sky Pirate: Future Princess Luna, who dresses like a seamare Captain and flies an airship.
- Speaks In Shoutouts: Present Apple Bloom can still only speak in song lyrics. The CMC subplot involves Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle trying to cure her. They don't succeed, but Future Apple Bloom is perfectly fine when she shows up.
- Spot the Imposter: Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon run into two Baron Zeppelis—one of them the real deal, and the other actually an "evil twin robot clone from the alternate timeline of that mirror universe". First, SS reasons that the one with the goatee is always the evil one, but DT reminds her that neither have goatees, just identical mustaches. Then, SS grabs a gun and tries to force a Kill Us Both reaction, but that doesn't work, either. Finally, DT notices a difference in appearance that should have been obvious all along.
- Strange Minds Think Alike: In the opening, Princess Luna and one of Baron Zeppeli's messengers, thousands of miles away from each other, independently refer to Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon as "those two irritating fillies that nobody likes". Also gets an Ironic Echo at the end, where adult Apple Bloom calls them "these two adorable fillies that everyone loves!"
- The Summation: Plays out as a Scooby-Doo parody. Silver Spoon explains that the villain's entire scheme was an elaborate real estate scam, then unmasks the villain to reveal that they're actually... "Wow. Not who I was expecting at all."
- Take Our Word for It: Future Apple Bloom has an awesome cutie mark, so great that it totally makes up for how long it took to appear. It's never described in any detail.
- Talk Like a Pirate: Princess Luna varies quite a bit. She doesn't even try to sound piratey when she's away from her ship. When she is on the ship..."Aye, tis' a wale of a tale, and a storm of trouble be brewin' on these shores. Or somethin', my scurvy accent could use more work. Cosplay looks great though."
- Tap on the Head:Therefore feeling not an ounce of guilt, the thick history book proceeded to bludgeon [Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon] into unconsciousness.
Twilight sighed contentedly. "You'd think battering fillies into a coma wouldn't feel so great, but there you'd be wrong." - Tempting Fate: Twilight does it, and catches herself just quick enough to hang a lampshade on it."Well, it sure is great to have everything fixed, and absolutely all the loose ends tied up, isn't it?" Twilight said. Then she facehoofed. "Oh, Celestia, did I actually say that? Incoming irony in three... two..."
- Time Crash: Can you do it? Can you crash time twice? Yes, you can. First, Pudding Head gains reality-warping power and tries to reshape the world to her liking, causing catastrophes throughout every time stream. When it looks like Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon might fix it, they end breaking time worse with their Grand Tiara and Wayfarer Spoon. This causes time portals to open at random, causing ponies and monsters throughout history to mingle and fight. Then a vortex opens in the sky, devouring all of reality...
- Timeline Altering Macguffin: Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon bring a modern history book back to the ancient earth pony kingdom... and promptly lose it. A member of the Time Police berates them for letting a book with information about the future fall into the wrong hooves.
- Time Police: The Order of Harmony Corps, who enforce temporal stability across every timeline in the entire multiverse. Including non-pony universes.
- Time Travel: In a weird and convoluted way.
- Timey-Wimey Ball:
- Oddly used. It's clear that nearly every author had a different idea of how time travel works, but no one ever explicitly defines any rules. So there are contradictions, but a reader could still wrangle them into a post hoc model.
- Then happens in-universe, when Twilight launches into a contradictory, nonsensical metaphor to explain a timestream-mending magic spell. This explanation leaves everyone more confused than when she started.
- Tomato in the Mirror: Arriving at the headquarters of the Time Police, Baron Zeppeli transforms into a human, much to the surprise of everyone—especially Zeppeli himself. Memories of his past life come rushing back, and Zeppeli remembers that he used to be a human.
- Too Spicy for Yog-Sothoth: A flashback shows Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon trying to bully Apple Bloom. AB's lyric-quoting weirds them out so much that they completely give up on bulling her.
- [Trope Name]: Quoth Twilight:"What the idiosyncratic pony obscenity is going on out there?!"
- True Companions: As bratty as they are to everyone else, Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon really do care about each other. On the candy world, DT rescues SS from the Nihilbog's mind control, in defiance of mission control's orders. And in the time portal, SS invokes their friendship to convince DT to take a Leap of Faith.
- We ARE Struggling Together: The members of the Earth Liberation Front waste the entire meeting bickering about nothing. Star Swirl notes that it was their most productive meeting yet.JB: These are truly the times that try one's soul.
- Ye Olde Butcherede Englishe: Parodied when Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon first arrive at the ancient earth pony kingdom. Pudding Head greets them with some amusingly bad Shakespearean English... then she's relieved to discover that DT and SS don't speak like that."Forsooth! The fair maidens awaketh! Verily, thy countenances dost concealeth knavely heart. Wherefore mocketh ye justice with such outrageous silencetheth? [...] Oh you speak common Equestrian? That will make everything soooo much easier."
- Yes-Man: Silver Spoon is this for part of the first chapter. Nearly all of her dialogue is tagged with "Silver Spoon agreed", and at one point she thinks to herself, "I bet DT is thinking something, and whatever it is, I agree with it!" But when Diamond Tiara insults silversmithing, Silver Spoon suddenly develops opinions of her own."No," Diamond Tiara said. "Silver is for whiny babies."
"Screw you, DT!" Silver Spoon disagreed. - Zero Wingrish: The cyborg cat is a "worthless consumer model" with a translation chip that needs replacement, so when it tries to relay information from the internet:The robotic cat adjusted its microphone so its master would hear all it had to tell. "In first of crackled mastering perabula, building or spacious blot matters called additional. The rapidly much pornography squeaked of touch of brand confused the mystics. Thus expelled of humbled slaying flirtaciousness. Dancing clocked insides without often banish slept, thy catterpiller."
