Warning: Spoilers for the story "Dazzling Homecoming" to follow!

Hello everyone, Scholarly-Cimmerian here. Just for the sake of posterity, I thought I'd share some thoughts and behind-the-scenes info about the Shattered Universe's version of Starswirl the Bearded.

As most of you should know, in the first main story for this AU, Starswirl first appeared cruelly banishing the three Sirens from the village they had made a home at, more or less on the basis that they weren't ponies, and thus not to be trusted or had around. That was pretty much it, really. Starswirl rolled into town, took one look at the Sirens, was all "nope, you won't do" and *BAM*! Banished.

Understandably, readers reacted quite strongly to the character, and as I recall there were a lot of calls for the wizard's head on a pike. To say the least. And I won't say that I didn't understand the anger there, I mean, it *was* a scummy thing to do. But at the same time... I've never been a fan of anger, especially as an answer to something.

But besides that... I must admit, I was also a little interested by Starswirl. Even just beyond this fic's version of him, there was also the canonical version of him, who was also quite the salty old grump who was in need of a good cuff upside the head to snap him out of his pessimistic "once a villain, always a villain" attitudes. People didn't like the character, for a number of reasons, but I must admit... there was a part of me that felt sorry for Starswirl the Bearded. He struck me as a sad and angry old man; an old cop who'd probably worked too many cases and seen too much.

I was a big fan once of The Dresden Files series, and there was a character in there, Warden Morgan, who seems at first a blindly suspicious and hateful jerk out to bully the main character, hoping to catch him out and have him executed as a dark wizard, a warlock... but in the seventh book, "Dead Beat," Harry Dresden comes to a realization that Morgan - a veteran wizard and enforcer of magical law - is, in his words, "a burnt-out cop." Someone who'd become so jaded and embittered by the failings of the system, by the cruelty and ugliness that they saw on their beat, that they'd become hardened and mean, driven to punish wrongdoers, driven by anger. For that anger was the only thing that kept them going. The part of the book where Harry realizes that about his longtime tormentor - the man he'd just seen as a stoolie of the wizard council at best, before finally getting new insight into the man - really stuck with me, even years later. I looked at Starswirl the Bearded, and wondered if something similar was the case with him too.

This is where we come to the Homecoming story now. I had co-wrote "The Tournament of Friendship" with FourShadow, and in particular had focused on writing the Rainbooms' reformation, and also on the character of the Shattered-verse Sci-Twi / Midnight Sparkle. FourShadow told me about their ideas for a story with the Dazzlings getting to return to Equestria, and I thought it sounded good. We workshopped a couple of ideas for how it might all play out... and after a certain point, we got to the idea of the Sirens, Adagio in particular, confronting Starswirl once more.

There were a lot of ways that this could play out. As a matter of fact, my earliest, most basic idea for this confrontation would have taken from Avatar: The Last Airbender, the episode "The Southern Raiders," when Katara confronted the man who'd murdered her mother. In an episode all about the idea of forgiveness versus vengeance, Katara finally chose not to kill him... not out of any merciful feeling or ability to forgive the little creep, but because she determined that he just wasn't worth it.

That was my first idea. And a germ of it survives into the actual story, though it became more Aria's takeaway than anyone else's.

My second big idea, was then thinking about getting more into Starswirl as a character, based on my earlier comparison of him to Warden Morgan. I pitched the idea to FourShadow, of the Sirens confronting Starswirl in his tower, of them being ready for a fight, eager to thrash him the moment he tried anything - but instead, the old wizard would just sadly accept their anger and merely tell them that they were right to hate him. And that, when pressed about WHY he had made this turnaround, he would explain himself... telling about 1) what had made him become embittered in the first place, and 2) what had made him realize that he had authored much of his own misery. FourShadow was intrigued by the idea, and gave me permission to go ahead with it, so I began brainstorming.

But what could I use? What would make a good basis for Starswirl becoming so jaded, so bitter and suspicious of non-ponies? I had to admit, I was stumped. I didn't want to make Starswirl overly sympathetic in a lot of ways - the farthest thing from my mind was making him look justified in hating or suspecting the worst of non-Equestrian creatures! But what could I do here? Stumped, I went trawling around the wiki, and then, the answer came to me.

Scorpan and Tirek.

It all seemed so simple, so elegant. Instead of Scorpan befriending Starswirl out of a genuine desire to help, it would turn out that in the Shattered universe, Scorpan's intentions were selfish and deceitful. And so, stung that he'd been so used by someone he'd thought was a kindred spirit, Starswirl would swear to never be conned or swayed by any judgment except his own, ever again... And only until it was far too late, so many centuries later, after returning from Limbo, would the clever and wise Starswirl realize that he had been nothing but a bitter and suspicious fool.

I began writing in earnest, and the story flowed together with surprisingly few snags in the process. The biggest one I hit, actually, was determining Tirek's ultimate fate. Would he be merely deposed and imprisoned by his brother, or killed outright? And if so, how? I at one point planned to have it be that Starswirl would depower and imprison Tirek, only to learn later that Scorpan had killed the centaur to secure the throne for himself; but for the sake of simplicity I went for the route of Tirek being offed by Starswirl himself in a desperation attack... and to rub salt in the wound, that Scorpan would promptly leave him for dead, the pony wizard having served his usefulness. In fact it seemed even worse in some ways, Starswirl having to limp back home, stewing in shame and self-loathing, swearing bitterly-- "Never again."

...Boy, I can be a right sadistic bastard, can't I?

But admittedly, that kind of was the intent with the whole idea. I figured that Starswirl - maybe in canon - had some sour stuff in his past, and I figured that in the Shattered-verse, it was even more likely, given the AU setting. It was also interesting, once Tirek and Scorpan entered the story, to figure them out and how they would fit into this tale. Tirek, by the by, I don't see as a heroic character in the Shattered-verse: he's evil, but it was more a "necessary evil," I saw him having overthrown his father King Vorak (here a cruel and wasteful tyrant) and basically begun work on whipping the kingdom back into shape by any means necessary. Not a good or pleasant fellow by any stretch of the imagination, but his undoing was assuming that his brother Scorpan would never turn on him or seek to betray him.

And as for Scorpan himself... I don't know what his ultimate lot would be in the Shattered-verse. Starswirl had no further dealings with him, I can tell you that. I can go two ways. Either, sadly, Scorpan managed to take the kingdom his father and brother had died for, and ruled it as he saw fit for a long time, unchallenged and unquestioned... or ultimately the deposer was himself deposed in a revolt by his mistreated subjects. Ultimately, I leave it to the reader to decide.

On a final note... Starswirl's final fate was something I was torn on. FourShadow was moved enough by what I'd written for the chapter "Bitter Reunion," to get me to try and give him something like a happier ending. And I think that it worked out in the end. While I wasn't keen on the initial suggestion of having him get fully back on his hooves and for Princess Trixie to send word to Adagio and her sisters (as I felt that Starswirl was too hurt and wounded inside to fully mend emotionally in that amount of time) I did think very hard about how to give him a ray of hope. I thought it would be just as, if not even more meaningful, to show the poor old guy, stepping out his door again, and taking those first tentative steps on the path to learning how to live again.

And Sonata, bless her, helped set him on that path. Bless you, FourShadow, for writing out her note to Starswirl, telling him that she had forgiven him.

I'm well aware that forgiveness is a dicey subject in fiction. But I like to think that Four and I did a decent job handling it with this story. If anyone has an opinion about it, please, by all means, leave a comment down below.

Well, that was about all I had to say (finally), on this subject. I just wanted to share my thoughts about one of the more contentious characters, both from canon and in the Shattered-verse, what went into the creation of the story that focused on this AU's version of Starswirl the Bearded, and of a couple of other aspects of it all too. Hope you all found this essay interesting!

This is Scholarly-Cimmerian, now signing off.