Fanfic / The Wheel and the Butterfly Saga

The Wheel and the Butterfly saga is a crossover fic between My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic and Dan Vs..

A former pink pony finds herself in a new, hostile world and a new friend who's perhaps even more hostile. A small, angry man finds himself with a new friend he didn't want. Can they make it through this new misadventure together, or is it the universe that needs to watch out for them?

Has two side stories, the first Spin-Off is Dan and Pinkie Take a Slice out of Life, a Slice of Life story of Dan and Pinkie being roomates, and the second Chaos Vs. Order, a recounting by Discord of his past.

Tropes:

• Abusive Parents: Dan's. They kept him in a cage!
• Acquired Poison Immunity: Dan's resistance to tear gas, mace, etc., comes up again (and apparently the resistance extends to other poisons as well, since a poisoned dagger caused only minor irritation). Unfortunately for the hug-loving Pinkie, this means that he sometimes doesn't clean it off immediately.
  • Pinkie eventually develops a chloroform resistance due to Dan repeatedly using it on her.
  • Parodied with the Lenny’s waitress Helen, who repeatedly gets hit with high-fructose corn syrup, which she’s allergic to, and eventually stops reacting to it, which, as Pinkie points out, basically makes her a regular person.
• Adaptational Jerkass: The MLP characters end up taking a couple levels in jerkass, largely to help them keep up with the Crapsack World nature of the Dan Vs. half of the crossover.
• Ascended Extra: A lot of oneshot or minor Dan Vs. characters get increased roles here.
  • Becky shows up as an employee of the comic book store Pinkie and Dan go to, and even joins the gang on a vengeance run or two.
  • Ninja Dave also appears more (especially after he and Becky start dating).
  • Wally's explosives business is doing so well, thanks largely to Dan and Pinkie, that he opens a bakery where the two of them get jobs.
  • Crunchy finally gets a job he can hold down for more than an episode when he starts working at the bakery.
  • Amber returns as a couples therapist, and after that fails, joins the bakery as well.
  • Sarge, the Salvation Armed Forces soldier that Dan tangled with, joins the bakery gang as well after getting injured when Pinkie and Dan are trying to obtain a new couch.
• Affably Evil: Jean/Dr. Splice is very nice and neighborly for a Mad Scientist.
• All Periods Are PMS: Pinkie's first period, which is justified since, as Dan points out, ponies don't have periods, and thus it's more intense for her. Luckily Elise helps her get some birth control pills to make future periods less intense.
• Awesomeness by Analysis: Dan is able to quickly figure out a lot of about Pinkie.
  • Pinkie can tell what ingredients were used in a cupcake just by taking a bite.
• Ax-Crazy: Dan and Pinkie both have their moments, especially when the other is hurt, insulted or threatened in some way.
• Berserk Button:
  • Dan has too many to list, but a big one is messing with Pinkie.
  • Pinkie does not like the use of artificial ingredients in food.
  • Pinkie does not like Dan*. Apparently even Dan is disturbed by what she’d like to do to him if she got the chance.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Often, Pinkie being the biggest offender.
  • When Dan burns Pinkie’s photo album in front of her, Chris punches him and tells him off.
  • Pinkie briefly threatens to stab Dan 37 times one day when he’s been particularly annoying, and apparently has threatened him with lesser amounts a few times before that (although she's never followed through on those threats).
  • When Pinkie meets Colby, she threatens to attack him when he hits on her.
  • When Pinkie sees Dan* by chance, she attacks him and throws him out the window of the restaurant they're in (after telling him off). And apparently he got off lucky, even Dan is disturbed by the things Pinkie has said she wishes to do to Dan*.
  • When Dan* kidnaps Dan, Pinkie takes a few levels in Ax-Crazy (trying to kill Dan* before he can tell her where Dan is, for one thing) and only calms down a bit once Dan is rescued.
• Big Eater:
  • Chris is this, as in canon. He tones it down a bit (especially the Extreme Omnivore tendencies he's displayed a few times) after he stops using an experimental appetite enhancer that Elise brought home as cologne.
  • Pinkie is this as well. At one point Dan sics her and Chris on an all-you-can eat buffet at a hotel that he felt deserved vengeance.
  • This is a temporary side effect of the prototype military transporter Chris and Elise use. Dan jokes that there wouldn't be any difference with Chris, but that was before the big lug sucked out the contents of an IV bag and attempted to eat Pinkie's hair.
• Big Bad: The Order Keepers/TOK. They're the ones who sent Pinkie to Dan's world (though Discord changed the destination), and want to eliminate Pinkie because she throws off their calculations to the end of everything.
• Blunt Metaphors Trauma: Pinkie. When someone tells her to forget something ('Oh, forget it' and the like), she does.
• Brick Joke: After Dan and Pinkie escape from TOK, she realizes she's still a pony, leading her to cry "son of a BIT--. Two chapters later, when the scene picks up again, the first line is "—CH!"
• Brown Note: Pinkie's interplanetary distress signal (that is, for causing interplanetary distress). It affects electronics, up to and including causing a UFO that abducted Dan to crash, can apparently prevent a person from passing out from hearing it, is loud enough that Twilight and the All That Shimmers Sunset Shimmer could hear it, despite both being in separate dimensions (in the latter's case, she was also in a realm that may be entirely in her head), and will only stop if you kick or hit Pinkie.
• But for Me, It Was Tuesday:
  • Dan and company are so used to the chaos that follows him that they barely blink an eye at it.
  • Pinkie eventually has this reaction to Dan chloroforming her.
  • Apparently Dan* getting attacked on the Wolfman only ranks third on Applejack’s craziest pie challenge list.
  • When one of the people Dan has gotten revenge on comes back to get revenge on him, he often has trouble placing them.
  • When the leaders of N.A.R.F. try to intimidate the bakery workers before having lesser members roleplay as insufferable customers, saying dramatic things about how difficult it will be, all the gang does is ask what day of the week they should act like it is at the store.
  • Apparently D.H. gets captured by robots so frequently she has an emergency message for the situation as a speed dial option on her cell.
• Carnivore Confusion: Pinkie doesn't react very well when she first finds out what hamburgers are made of after eating one. She eventually gets over it after a talk with Twilight.
• Continuity Nod: Pinkie refers to Twilight’s trip to a human-inhabited Earth more than once.
• Cosmic Plaything: Pinkie lampshades this after Dan tells her about his Dark and Troubled Past, saying that a lot of the time it seems the world is out to get him.
• Crossover: Between My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic and Dan Vs..
  • There's later a scene that crosses over with another fic by the same author, All That Shimmers.
  • It later has a Christmas themed bonus chapter that crosses over with Phineas and Ferb.
  • As of Part 18, it is now crossing over with Evil Dead. Part 18 is appropriately named "Dan Vs Deadites".
• Dark and Troubled Past: Dan. Just Dan. Elise destroys the speaker for the bug she had on him after five minutes of listening to it, and decides not to listen into the bug ever again it was so horrible!
• The Determinator: Pinkie Pie, while trying to find a way to get her balance back, would not stop trying gymnastics, until she was physically immobilized!
• Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?:
  • During the camping arc, Dan, Pinkie, Elise and Chris manage to take down a Windigo.
  • Dan and Pinkie take out a large horde of vampires (including their master), with Dan decapitating a fairy that was helping them in one arc.
  • When TOK kidnaps Pinkie, Dan wills any of them that get too close into physical form with sheer rage, and manages to kill several of them, their king only barely escaping.
• Disproportionate Retribution: Played straight by everyone, everyone, with one exception: Sunset Shimmer was left for dead in freezing water after a skating competition. She takes a properly measured response, even calling the whole thing off once she feels like she's gone far enough. The fact that Pinkie has a chainsaw and she only has a police baton is another major factor in that decision.
• Doppelgänger: Pinkie eventually starts running into native counterparts to her Equestrian friends. It starts early on with Sunset Shimmer and Flash, but later Trixie, Twilight, Rarity and Applejack appear and/or are mentioned.
• Double Entendre: Pinkie messes with Twilight using these when she gets frustrated after being continually interrupted while trying to talk to her.
• Double Standard Rape: Female on Male: Subverted. Pinkie goes a little Dan-Crazy while stuck in pony form, not to mention going into heat. Twilight and Elise find it funny at first, not because it's a guy being molested, but because it's Dan. Chris is quick to point out that, no, it still isn't funny.
• Dracolich: TOK has the original Dracolich, who actually has that for a name, as one of their minions. It (Discord never asked it if it was male or female) hasn’t shown up yet though, save in Discord's recounting of his first encounter with TOK.
• Driven by Envy: Dan* is so intent on ruining Dan’s life because he’s managed to make something of himself while barely changing while Dan* has to repeatedly reinvent himself and steal the identities of others.
• Egopolis: Parodied when Dan and co. go to Danville.
• Empowered Badass Normal:
  • Dan eventually gains a Megaton Punch ability.
  • Dan* gets bitten by the Wolfman.
• Everyone Went to School Together: Jean and Dan's evil dentist Dr. Pullum went to school together.
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: Dan has no idea how to spell "Friend" (It's never come up before!), and has to have the meaning of "care" explained to him. As in, why he should be concerned about the welfare of anyone who isn't Dan.
• Fish out of Water: Pinkie has some trouble adjusting to some aspects of life as a human, like eating meat, wearing clothes, etc.
• Fluffy Tamer: Sarge (one of Dan's friends/minions) tames a Tyrannosaurus Rex (Tyra).
• Fun with Acronyms: The National Association of Restaurant Foundation. When spoken aloud, they prefer it said En Ay Ar Eff, as opposed to Pinky's (note the Y) catchphrase.
  • And later, the League Against Pinkie and Dan and Also Needs Chris Erased. Dan* doesn't seem to get it.
  • The Order Keepers are often referred to as TOK in conversation.
  • Dan’s shoulder devil is called Real Evil Dan, or RED, and the ninja Elise on his other shoulder is Evil Elise, or E.E.
• Genre Blind: Don, who doesn’t believe in the supernatural which nearly allows Hiram to kill him.
• Genre Savvy: Dan, Pinkie, Chris and Elise have all qualified at some point, with the trope even being name dropped once or twice.
• Genius Ditz: D.H. proves to be this, though for some reason she tends to downplay her intellect around the bakery crowd.
• Genius Loci: At one point Idaho seems to attack Pinkie, setting its state fish, tree, vegetable, bird, and butterfly on her.
• Good Angel, Bad Angel:
  • Dan has a devil version of him and a ninja version of Elise (she explains that his slightly less evil conscience booted her out of her position on her shoulder and took it himself, Dan being OK with it since part of him is still tormenting her) on his shoulders.
  • Pinkie has a fun-loving pony on one shoulder and Pinkamina on the other, and can see the shoulder residents of others as well.
• Gosh Dang It to Heck!: While none of the characters swear much (the most vulgar it's ever gotten to was a single use of "ass"), special mention goes to Sunset Shimmer, who uses animals in place of normal swearing. Pup instead of Fuck, Lamb instead of Damn, Shell instead of Hell, etc. Ultimately, it's revealed that she wasn't aware of doing this. It was a spell placed on her by the Dan Vs's universe version of Trixie.
• Hammerspace Hair: Pinkie's cotton candy locks, as usual, though some of the things she can pull out are created when she does instead of being stored within. At one point she pulls out a tarp big enough to cover a plane. Pinkie's sisters apparently were traumatized when they journeyed inside.
  • Last Laugh has similar abilities.
• Hate Sink: Elise's parents and ex-boyfriend.
  • Don and Elise Sr. want to kill Elise's husband and force her into marrying Colby for completely petty and selfish reasons, they constantly complain about Chris, for not being a real man, despite Elise's father doing nothing to help the situation, completely forget about their true son's existence, repeatedly talk down to Pinkie and Dan, and even after the gang saves their (worthless) hides, they only act like they had a change of heart to save face and still plan on finding a way to get rid of Chris. It says something when not only is Dan disgusted, but their daughter's only regret is her mother got off unscratched, while Chris, a normally forgiving guy isn't having any of their condescending "apologies" and punches her dad.
  • Then there's Colby, Elise's egotistical and misogynist ex, who insists that Elise needs his protection after she had saved his life, repeatedly treats Chris like a poor excuse for a man and was completely OK with getting Chris killed so he could take Elise back, and when everyone is cornered in the cabin, he complains about them not having the guts to go out and face a ''serial kill/ Wendigo while ignoring the fact that they were about to go out and save them earlier, foolishly underestimates the threat despite constant warning and tells Elise, the women who just saved him less than an hour ago, wouldn't stand a chance and tries the use the situation to win her over, before stepping outside to show Chris and Dan what a real man's supposed to do. He lasts long enough for the creature to No-Sell a punch, before throwing him in the air and ripping his throat out.
• Hot Skitty-on-Wailord Action: Invoked. Luna recalls a diplomatic conference where the ambassador from the southern cat people (a Southern Kitty, if you will) began an affair with one of the Lords of the whale nations. The only pony to ever witness it went into a BSOD.
  Shining Armor: How does... how does that even work?!
• Hormone-Addled Teenager: Gibson, a 16 year old boy who works at the bakery. He often hits on the female customers, and his female co-workers as well (primarily Amber once she's hired, since Pinkie is dating Dan and D.H is married).
• Humanity Ensues: Pinkie is turned into a human when she is sent to Dan’s Earth.

• Infinite Supplies: Pinkie seems to have an infinite supply of money, due to a magic wallet.
• Innocent Fanservice Girl: Pinkie, being from Equestria, starts off this way. However, she eventually starts "picking up the subtle nuances of not wanting creeps to see what I look like naked!”
• Interplay of Sex and Violence: Being affectionate and being violent are one and the same for Dan and Pinkie as a couple. Or being violent over being affectionate. Or being affectionate by being violent.
• Invisible to Normals: Pinkie can see the Good Angel, Bad Angel pairs on the shoulders of others, instead of just her own.
• Karma Houdini: Carried over from Dan Vs., the main characters rarely get hit with karma whenever they do something bad.
• Kid from the Future: Last Laugh, the daughter of Pinkie and Dan, makes appearances starting in Part 17.
• Know When to Fold 'Em: Sunset Shimmer, who decides to stop seeking vengeance on Pinkie when she finds herself outclassed, after already giving them a blow that she feels evens things out.
• Lamarck Was Right: Last Laugh/Elle inherited more than her looks from her parents.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall/Breaking the Fourth Wall/Medium Awareness: Pinkie, who else.
  • At one point she calls out the author for taking so long for resolving the ambiguity of her and Dan's romance.
  • During the confrontation with Dan*, after another character (Chris) does the Skyward Scream, Pinkie rips the v from the "vs." that appears and uses it to pummel Android-Dan, with the "s" and period following soon after.
  • In the Doctor Doom bonus-arc, Dan has a Flashback to him unleashing hundreds of cats into Estonia because he was mad at their president, and Pinkie is aware of said flashback, much to Dan's confusion.
• Limited Wardrobe: Pretty much everybody except Pinkie tends to wear the same thing most of the time. Clothing store employees have breakdowns when she shops for multiple outfits for herself.
• Living Emotional Crutch: Dan has become one to Pinkie, as the stress of her situation has built up, with vengeance runs being her outlets. When Dan* kidnaps him, she becomes decidedly unhinged until he's rescued.
• Living Lie Detector: Amber can use her knowledge of psychology to spot tells.
• Mad Scientist: Dan and Pinkie's new neighbor Dr. Splice is one, though he prefers to go by Jean. He specializes in biology experimentation.
• Morality Pet: Subverted. While Dan does seem to care about Pinkie, he has taken zero steps towards becoming nicer and seems to be making Pinkie worse.
• Moral Myopia: Dan* claims that Dan is a menace and needs to be stopped, but is willing to form a Villain Team-Up of Dan's previously beaten enemies, including ones out to Take Over the World like the Gym Androids and Dr. Pullum, in order to take him and his friends out. He's called out on it.
• Never Bring a Knife to a Gun Fight: More like never bring a police baton to a chainsaw fight. This part of the reason Sunset Shimmer decides to leave and not seek further revenge.
• No Conservation of Energy: It's a major plot point that Pinkie's Reality Warping can actually create new matter and energy (something that not even Discord can do), since this delays the entropic destruction of everything, which TOK desires.
• Non-Idle Rich: Pinkie, courtesy of Discord, has a wallet that always produces as much money as she needs. Additionally, she won at least two fortunes in Vegas. She still elects to work in a bakery so that she can make people happy. Also, she can't stand the places that use artificial ingredients.
• No Periods, Period: Nope! Pinkie gets her first period as a human, and does not react well (since, as Dan points out, ponies play this straight). Elise helps her get some birth control pills to help make future periods less intense.
• Omnicidal Maniac: The Order Keepers, who wish to eliminate Pinkie because her ability to create new matter and energy slows down their plan to destroy all reality through entropy. They're decidedly more patient than most though.
• One-Steve Limit: Averted. Dan's Evil(er) Twin shows up, differentiated in the text by calling him Dan*. Sunset Shimmer even takes to calling him Asterisk in conversation.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business:
  • When Dan knocks on their door and asks to come in, Chris and Elise immediately suspect that he’s an impostor.
  • Elise and Chris are shocked to see that Pinkie got Dan to eat vegetables (even if they were covered in enough hot sauce that he couldn't really taste them).
  • Everybody is surprised when Dan actually defuses the situation in the cabin arc.
• Orcus on His Throne: When Discord controlled Equestria, he pretty much caused chaos from a distance while waiting in his castle for ponies to challenge him.
• Order vs. Chaos: The Order Keepers are pitted against the chaotic Pinkie, and indeed, Dan’s entire world, and they’ve done battle with Discord in the past.
• Overly Long Gag: In the Dan & Pinkie Vs. Interspecies Relationship arc, Pinkie is trying to explain to Twilight why her being turned back into a pony because of TOK abducting her is a problem, but keeps getting frustrated as others, ranging from Spike, the rest of the Mane Six, the princesses and Shining Armor to random Ponyville residents, Iron Will, and a circus keep entering the library and interrupting her, especially after the rest of the Mane Six (and Iron Will) get the problem but Twilight is still oblivious.
• Pair the Spares: Ninja Dave and Becky start dating.
• Paper-Thin Disguise: Putting a mustache on Mr. Mumbles. It somehow gets the cat into the Bellagio.
• Psychopathic Manchild: Pinkie quickly becomes this, and Sonata Dusk was apparently always like this.
• Reality Warper: Pinkie, who can break the laws of physics to the point that she can create new matter and energy, and is referred to as "The Warper" by The Order Keepers.
• Retcon: The author originally had the fic take place not long after My Little Pony: Equestria Girls, but later changed it to the middle of the fourth season (specifically, after "Pinkie Pride").
• Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory: Dan manages to remember Last Laugh, at least to some degree, after the timeline shifts.
• Running Gag: Several throughout the fic.
  • Things catching fire any time they fall on the ground. As you do.
  • Various objects thrown around by their antics hitting bikers and causing crashes and the occasional death.
  • Clothing stores catching fire and the employees and customers all dying a willing but horrible death any time Pinkie goes shopping.
• Sanity Slippage: The stress of Pinkie's situation has been causing her some issues.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here:
  • Dan’s Good Angel, Bad Angel pair go to get drunk when they see Pinkie’s pair.
  • Sunset Shimmer leaves when she sees that Pinkie has a chainsaw.
• Shipper on Deck: Elise Ships Dan and Pinkie, much to her own horror. She describes it as "the X-Files all over again."
  • Pinkie ships Chris and Elise. She also ships Becky and Ninja Dave.
• Shout-Out
  • The title is a reference to the band Coldplay.
  • Dan and Pinkie develop a fondness for anime, including Code Geass.
  • In the Camping arc, we get ones to multiple horror movies over several genres, as well as, Lord of the Flies.
  • There's a couple references to Friendship is Witchcraft and Dragon Ball Z Abridged.
  • After discovering their love for Anime and around the "vampire arc" Pinkie Pie and Dan dress up as Alucard and Anderson respectively.
  • During the camping arc, Dan specifically cites a zombie redneck torture family as one of the dangers they could face.
• Smug Super: Terrifi-Guy, who believes that people should practically worship him simply because of his powers. His Face–Heel Turn isn't exactly much of a surprise.
• Spin-Off: Has two side-stories.
  • Dan and Pinkie Take a Slice out of Life, a slice of life story about Dan and Pinkie's interactions as roommates.
  • Chaos Vs. Order, A telling by Discord about his past.
• Status Quo Is God: Invoked at least twice by Pinkie. She refers to it as a "warm, comforting feeling." Subverted in regards to the fact that Dan and Chris now know about Elise’s secret agent job.
• Supreme Chef: Pinkie, particularly when it comes to baked goods like cupcakes and muffins. One bite of one of them causes Wally to go into a trance-like state and immediately hire her for his bakery.
• Tempting Fate: Becky is the most frequent offender, the others are smarter about it.
• The Bus Came Back: Numerous minor characters and antagonists from Dan's past misadventures make comebacks, with several becoming regular characters.
  • Dan and Pinkie meet Becky at a comic shop, and she even goes on a vengeance run or two with them and starts dating Ninja Dave.
  • Terrifi-Guy shows up at the comic shop in an attempt to attack Dan.
• The Power of Hate: Dan's superpowers work on this. Unless he's really, really angry, they don't function.
• The Tape Knew You Would Say That: Dan* stalks Pinkie and Dan to the point that he and Pinkie can carry on a conversation this way.
• Too Dumb to Live: Colby, who stupidly fights Wendigo!Hiram and gets killed and eaten for his troubles.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: Pinkie becomes more Ax-Crazy the longer she stays in Dan's world; part of it could be explained as a way of her dealing with its Crapsack World nature, part of it can be chalked up to Dan's influence.
• Too Spicy for Yog-Sothoth:
  • When TOK kidnaps Pinkie, Dan, through sheer anger, manages to tap into the Nexus's power, force TOK back into physical form and kill several of them, their leader only narrowly avoiding the same fate, and bar them from accessing his world, all through raw anger and willpower.
  • When the group faces the last challenge, a group of NARF members acting the part of extremely difficult customers meant to test how long the group could handle them before snapping, this happens again. The ones who didn't go into a sugar crash from trying to actually eat their massive/specific orders so they could try again were scared off by Wally (who was wearing a cloak belonging to one of their bosses after his clothes got fried in above obstacle course), Gibson's lechery, Amber calling them out on their lies, D.H. and Crunchy being Literal-Minded and taking their clothes off when one of the "customers" said they didn't like their shirt, Chris's apathy towards the insults caused one lady to complain about how stupid she thought he was to Elise (who she thought was another member), leading Elise to send her overseas trapped in a cargo ship (frightening the others remaining by that point), and Pinkie drove one man to run into the spike pits in the obstacle course with her repeated attempts to help him when he pretended not to understand the menu, topping it off with a puppet (which he had a phobia of) made of a skull, shark teeth and Pinkie's bloody bandages.
• Unlimited Wardrobe: Pinkie, who tends to wear a new outfit pretty much every day. This actually causes clothing store clerk to freak out when they realize this.
• Unreliable Narrator: Discord a few times when relating his history. He gets called out for it and put back on track.
• Vengeance Feels Empty: Dan gets hit by this trope for the first time out of hundreds revenge plot, after he burns Pinkie's photo album in front of her, because of something she did while trying to be nice to him.
• Villain Team-Up: Dan* starts assembling one of people with grudges against Dan and company in order to take him out.
• Violently Protective Girlfriend: It goes both ways with Dan and Pinkie after they hook up. Dan's powers seem to be dependent on someone insulting, threatening, or harming Pinkie in some way at first, though he overcomes that limitation later.
• What Is This Thing You Call "Love"?: Dan actually has to have love explained to him by Chris at one point.
• Womanchild: Pinkie, even more so they canon.
  • Sonata Dusk, because the author seems to be under the impression that she and Pinkie exactly alike.
• Yaoi Fangirl: Elise has a secret room full of yaoi stuff.
  • Pinkie is initially put off by some of the more intense stuff, but finds she likes it too.

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