General: This was a perfect example of how to do a character development Slice of Life episode with secondary characters. We got to see a lot, by implication, of how Sunburst and Starlight grew up, and some of the influences that shaped them. Specifically their parents.
We've seen Starlight Glimmer progress from being one of the deadliest enemies Twilight Sparkle and Equestria have ever faced -- somepony willing to overthrow the social order and, when balked in this, wreck the very spacetime continuum -- to one of their best and most valuable friends. This has been a slow but rewarding process.
Introduction
What do you do when an enemy is vanquished?
In Human history, the answers have ranged from "make honorable peace with him" (Western European culture, usually) to "impale him and rape his women as the last sight his dying eyes shall behold" (ancient Assyria). And everywhere in between.
The Equestrian answer is usually "accept his surrender, and forgive him."
I. The Reason Why
My take on Starlight Glimmer is that she's a sociopath, and one on the border with psychopathy because she is easily enraged. And yes -- her problems go a lot deeper than the loss of her early friendship with Sunburst. Starlight just obsessed on this because she came closest to truly forming empathic bonds of friendship with Sunburst, causing her to be aware of what she didn't have in most of the rest of her life.
Some people don't like the fact that Twilight Sparkle, as Princess Twilight, is no longer exactly the spunky, snarky teenager that she was in the first few seasons, but has become more dignified and, well, regal in her behavior. Her character has changed, and she has grown, in many ways.
When I did my chronology, I set The Cutie Map in early April YOH 1505, because Our Town is clearly far north of Neigh Yoke -- I decided north even of Kon-Neighda in the Crystal Mountains, just on the safe side of the mountains from the Frozen Wastes -- this was because Starlight Glimmer wanted to put it far from the beaten path, all the scryshields in the world wouldn't do eher any good if every other traveller stumbled across it. Being located so far north, it would naturally be
Introduction
This comes up in MLP:FIM fanfiction mostly in connection with Spike and his long-lasting friendship / crush / love regarding Rarity, but it has general applications both to writing fiction and to real life, so I thought I should raise it. And one of the reasons I thought I should raise it is that most people who talk about this don't take it far enough. So I have a number of general points to make. But I'm going to start with a highly specific one.
It's fairly obvious that whatever sex lives the Mane Six have had have been not very successful ones, given that they don't have mates. Now, one may argue that they could have mates and the Show simply doesn't mention it -- but that's rather a large part of somepony's life to omit.
Some writers want to write Equestria as a sexually-promiscuous culture, one at least as promiscous as our own. Sometimes, they assume that because Equestria isn't Christian, the Equestrians would have pretty much no sexual morals whatsoever. (In doing so, of course, they pay Christianity an inadvertent and probably undeserved compliment -- they wrongly imagine that non-Christian societies are sexually amoral, which was precisely the mistake of the bigoted 19th-century
.Social manipulation is one of the fundamental ways that any social sapient being gets thing done. It's in fact the "soft" option on the "soft vs. hard" scale: its essence is to persuade others to do what you want. Manipulation can be overt or covert to varying degrees. The problem with manipulation is when it is done aggressively and immorally.
How do we judge "aggressive" or "immoral" in this case?
I have finally completed Post-Traumatic, my longest finished work on this site. At over 65 thousand words, it is essentially a short novel. I hope that you all like the radical turn that events take at my conclusion, and appreciate all of you who have followed and commented on this tale. I am now filled with confidence in my new power of story completion, and shall destroy all those who have prevented me from completing stories before.
I posted Chapter 10 of Post-Traumatic, "The Moon's Comfort." I realized that the scene with Luna talking to Twilight (and Twilight finally revealing her full emotional reaction to Our Town) needed to be its own chapter, so "A Robust Universe," in which Celestia explains to Twilight how Time Wars work, will now be Chapter 11. Consequently "A New Day," the chapter where the Mane Six and Spike are again reunited at the Friendship Castle will now be Chapter 12, with the stinger with
I'm trying to work out a good list of the important Ponies of Our Town, because I'm thinking of writing a story about one of them. I'm fanon-mining several stories here, in addition of course to the canon Season Five opener. So far the ones I have are (quickie format, but I have more complete descriptions of several of these):
When I started writing Post-Traumatic, I knew I was taking a gamble. Specifically, that the Show would not reveal much if anything about Starlight Glimmer's origin story, and that if it did, it would be the most obvious one -- former student of Celestia who learned enough of Star-Swirl the Bearded's magic that she was able to pervert the unfinished Spell of Destiny into the Spell of Sameness. Show seemed to be implying this in The Cutie Map.
Introduction
Some of you are probably wondering why I am making the tale of Harmonia Pie, obviously inspired by the famous dark fic "Cupcakes," fanon to the Shadow Wars Story Verse -- and in particular, why I am shining a spotlight on it in Post-Traumatic. I have some very specific reasons, and here shall explain them.
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