"Well, that sure didn't work."
I open my eyes and stare silently at the ceiling.
I killed her. I took at least three fatal swings. I must have had dozens of opportunities to reset when my invisibility cloak screwed up her plans. But I didn't. I freaked out when she showed up, and I killed her. I kept freaking out, and I killed her. Because I didn't have the presence of mind to reset and fight smart, all my friends are dead.
"… Twilight?"
It's so simple to fix it in hindsight, because she was fighting dumb too. Fire a hornbolt deliberately wide while she's tearing apart the invisibility cloak, then step into her return fire. Lift the heavy crate of metal scraps up as if I'm lining up a shot with her, then jump underneath it and let go while she's taking cover. Swing Home Run from the right instead of the left, forcing her to leap back toward the center of the car, and then charge her shoulder so she wheel-throws me out the hole she created; Euthanatos as I'm falling from the bridge. Hundreds of ideas. There's a new one each time I mentally replay the fight.
"Twilight, are you okay?" Spike touches my shoulder, then waves his claw in front of my face. I ignore him, keeping my eyes unfocused.
The worst part is that I did die. Her hooves around my neck were a free gift-wrapped second chance — and I wasted it by thinking of how to make her suffer in kind, rather than thinking strategically. Every single thing I did should have been focused, at any cost, on keeping her from dying.
I didn't do that. I blew my chance. I killed her, and they're dead.
"Oh no," Spike says. "Twilight?" When I continue to not move, he dashes off (again) in search of help (again). Once he's gone, I hear the click of hooves on stone (again) and the rustle of wings (again) as Celestia approaches and sits down just past the edge of my vision.
I say nothing, and it's a question; she says nothing, and it's a reply.
I curl up on my side, turning my back on her. For a long time, I hear neither speech nor motion from her. The faint cries, clangs, and screams of warfare drift in from outside. Finally, after what must be fifteen minutes, she breaks the silence. "I still need you, Twilight."
I stare at a mote of dust wandering through an unusually faint sunbeam — weakened by the smoke of a burning city, presumably — and ask the question her silence already answered: "Are my friends still dead?"
"Yes," she repeats.
"Well then," I say caustically, "I'll get right on that 'mildly inconvenience Chrysalis without having any effect on the outcome' thing."
"You have more power than you know, Twilight, but you have to get up to change the world."
"What's the point? The bottom line is, her loop starts before mine, so there's literally nothing I can do which she can't sabotage in advance of me ever starting. Honestly, I'm surprised she's not already here preemptively killing me. And clearly, her loop also starts too early for you to save my friends, or else you wouldn't be sitting here giving me pep talks."
"I'm sorry, Twilight, you're absolutely right," Celestia says with gentle reproach. "I'm here asking for your help because nothing can change the fact that we're doomed."
That line gave me pause when she first used it, but for the past several loops I've had a comeback prepared. "For five values of 'we', that's already true."
This time, she also responds instantly. "Six, if you're going to act like that. The one defeat that time looping can't change is a surrender."
I finally lift my head and look back at her. Her horn is a solid cone of brilliant white light, but that's not what catches my attention. She's sitting in perfect royal repose, one hoof raised, framed by the unearthly pastel radiance of her gently flowing mane — every inch the immaculate and indefatigable goddess whose single word can turn the fate of nations. It is rather inspiring. I wonder how much she practices that pose.
"Things have changed this loop," Celestia says. "Get up. Come see."
I frown. "Hang on. If you're about to tell me that my friends' death was another teachable moment …"
"No, no," she says quickly. "No lesson could ever come close to justifying that level of betrayal."
"… Alright."
"Not to mention the sabotage of our best hope for victory. I don't enjoy this war any more than you do, Twilight."
"Well," I say, suspicion receding, "it still sounds like war out there."
"As well it should. You said it yourself — Equestria's doomed."
I raise an eyebrow at her. "Gee, you really know how to motivate a mare."
She smiles enigmatically. "I can guarantee you've never seen it doomed like this before."
Outside, in the far distance, I hear new screaming, along with clear, high-pitched calls. There's the rumble of a building collapsing, then a loud, low roar to match it. The rumble builds — no, that's a different rumble, a low and ceaseless white noise I feel rather than hear. I notice that the magelight chandeliers are beginning to sway.
Curiosity finally overrides despair. "You win," I sigh, climbing to my hooves.
"I really don't," she says, pulling two invisibility cloaks out of her saddlebags with her teeth and passing one to me with an outstretched wing, "but at least we get to go out with a show."
A fierce glow in the bags catches my eye. "Are those the Elements?"
"Oh, yes. If I weren't devoting the entirety of my magic to suppressing them, they'd have lit up hours ago like fireworks in a volcano."
"So you're artificially delaying the end in order to watch the world burn with me," I say, narrowing my eyes. "Despite how much you say that hurts you to see. How is this not a … teachable …"
My words die away as we reach the front door of the archives. Outside is what I can only describe as an all-you-can-eat apocalypse buffet.
The moon is casting the mountain in shadow from impossibly close overhead, glowing red around the edges and shimmering with superheated air, already taking up a quarter of the sky and getting larger by the second. Underneath it, changelings, gryphons, dragons, and an occasional pegasus are wheeling through the skies and clashing in a loose free-for-all. A deep chasm has opened up along the main street of the city, with ponies and zebras and diamond dogs scrambling away as the edges crumble in and the cracks widen. On the far side of it, an ursa major is wading through the streets, casually smashing buildings underfoot. One of the wings of the castle is coated in purple slime, which is writhing and expanding and climbing the walls as five desperate armies throw fire and claw and spear and spell at it.
"You should probably put your cloak on before the seapony snipers spot you," the empty air next to me says.
I hurriedly don it as I drink in the ludicrous scale of the devastation. "Are you serious? Seaponies?!"
Celestia laughs. "The logistics of getting them to attack Canterlot were a touch too challenging, but you believed me for a second there, didn't you?"
I nod numbly, then remember she can't see me. "Wait. 'Getting them to attack'? What did you do?"
"I woke up this morning, forced Chrysalis to start the invasion early, and sent orders to our foreign ambassadors to publically assassinate seven world leaders. Once Luna fell defending the city, I rose her moon and stopped it mid-sky. Then I wiped out the wards and safeguards on as many of the arcane storage vaults as I could before I had to devote my full attention to the Elements. Now half a dozen races of mortal enemies are trying to find a way into the vaults to kill me so they can divert the moon and maybe stop the world from ending." I hear her hooves clop toward me and feel her sit down, her cloak just brushing against mine. "There's a strange sort of beauty to this, isn't there?"
"No!" I protest a little too quickly, desperately trying to ignore the part of me that's giggling like a schoolfilly. I turn my head toward Celestia, wishing I could see her expression. "That's … that's … how can you watch this? How could you do this to everypony?"
The silence of the invisible figure at my side stretches out into awkwardness, and I realize I just judged her over a loop designed to be reset away — destruction which won't exist in another few minutes. I'm about to retract my lecture when she clears her throat uncomfortably. "I'm so sorry, Twilight," she says, voice subdued. "You must think I'm a monster."
"To be fair," I add hurriedly, "it does make sense. It's just blowing off steam, right?" Stupid. Stupid!
"Thank you, but you're absolutely right. This was a bad idea. If … if you haven't reset yet, I would greatly appreciate it if you'd allow me to wipe this out and try again."
"Please don't," I say. "I didn't mean it."
"Twilight …" she says, pained. "I'm trying not to steal information from you by resetting without consent, but please, please, let me be better than this."
"Princess, please listen. I do understand. I didn't mean to judge — did I tell you about my loops spent shoplifting? I just said something thoughtless. I mean, while we're in a time loop, none of this is real …"
She sighs. "I don't deserve that excuse. Time loops are my life, Twilight. This is as real as anything else I've seen since the Celestial War. The only difference is I'll reset it at the end, instead of advancing my anchor point and letting time march on for another day. Looping does terrible things to you, and sometimes I forget how much I've changed."
"You're not a bad pony," I say firmly. "You could make this actually happen at any time, but you don't."
"I suppose there's that," she says.
We lapse into uncomfortable silence, and I force myself to watch Canterlot as a distraction. A pair of unicorns lose their grip on the edge of the chasm and fall screaming into blackness. A dragon noisily chews on a dying stallion. A four-story building collapses with a roar; a mare jumps from the roof as it goes, hits the ground, and stops moving. Next loop, I think, they'll all get up, eat breakfast, and go to work whistling a happy tune.
Suddenly the enormity of that hits me between the eyes. Celestia's monstrosity is her sacrifice. She sees all of this so that they don't ever have to. In a mere few years as the Element of Magic, I've staved off catastrophe after catastrophe, and she's been looping for a full millennium. Our perfect, beautiful Equestria must be built on the skeletons of thousands of apocalypses that never came to be.
"I really should explain myself," she says faintly, interrupting my thoughts. "I wasn't lying. Watching Chrysalis destroy Equestria over and over again did hurt, more than anything. But this … it feels remarkably different when it's you destroying everything you hold dear, instead of watching yourself flail ineffectually against a fate you can't fix alone. This is monstrous, Twilight. It's horrible of me, and it's wrong … but it's cathartic in all the right ways."
I shake my head and can't help but laugh. "It is, and it is … and to be honest? It is." That gets a chuckle out of her before we lapse into silence again.
A company of diamond dogs lets out a piercing howl, all in unison, then charges straight at the ursa major, stabbing its paws and swarming up its legs as it stomps and swats and bites them in half. It's gloriously pointless, but I guess they've decided that if their world is going to end, they might as well take down the biggest thing they can find on their way out. With three times the dogpower, they might have even made a dent in it.
"Did you really mean what you said?" Celestia asks. "About me not being a bad pony?"
"I did."
"… Thank you."
We watch quietly as the castle is dissolved in dark ooze, the moon grows to half the sky's width, and the five armies abandon the pretense of cooperation and start tearing each other apart in earnest. Right around the time the ursa major flattens Big Pen, I lean into Celestia's side. She shifts her weight to brace me, and I close my eyes, listening to the end of everything and feeling her barrel rise and fall with her slow, even breathing. The Elements in her saddlebags poke uncomfortably into my side, but after all the pain I've been through, such a little thing barely even registers.
"Thank you," I whisper back.
Her shoulder shifts as her head turns toward me. "For what?"
For everything, a voice inside me whispers, but I'm not quite brave enough to give voice to it. "For showing me this," I say instead. "Don't deny it, this was totally a teachable moment. But it worked."
Celestia laughs, and the gentle confidence returns to her voice. "I don't think 'teachable moment' means what you think it means. But for the sake of argument, what did you learn from this loop?"
"One, no matter what Chrysalis does, we are still masters of our own destiny."
"Poetic. But, yes, that's it exactly. All that the loop spell has power to do is add new memories to her brain from potential futures. It makes her neither invincible nor perfect — nor a genius, for that matter. She has weaknesses and blind spots. We'll find them."
The so-dumb-it's-brilliant corner of my brain is beginning to stir. "Two, that all of us have ponies we … care about an awful lot," I say. "But if you wake up one loop and they've vanished and all you have left are memories and monsters, mourning that loss is just going to drive you crazy."
"Mourning is absolutely legitimate … but they're not lost yet, Twilight. Your friends weren't dead at my anchor point — so they're not dead until we let them be dead, and I promise you that neither one of us is going to accept that."
I clear my throat. "What I meant is, sometimes you can get this sacred and untouchable image of how it's all supposed to go. Who ponies close to you are, and what they mean to you. Time loops don't give you that luxury. That image is going to get wrecked over and over again. And what you have to do to stay sane is accept those changes as they come, and make the most of the opportunities that creates."
I can almost hear the smile in her voice. "I'm proud of you, Twilight. You're in very difficult circumstances right now, but with an attitude like that I know you'll make it through with everything I admire about you intact."
She missed it. Missed it, or is ignoring it. The so-dumb-it's-brilliant corner of my brain is screaming like a madpony. The more reasonable parts decide to give up, sit back and watch the show. "Princess? Would you pull back your hood?"
She's silent for a moment. "Why?"
"I want to see the expression on your face for something. Humor me."
There's a rustle of fabric. A white-hot glowing horn and a pastel-framed white head appear out of thin air, as she stares down over her shoulder to where she feels me resting at her side. "Alright."
I grin. "And three," I say, "sometimes when things are at their worst, you have to give yourself permission to go a little crazy."
Telekinesis can't move only part of an object. I can't grab her head in my aura without overpowering her and grabbing her whole body. But I can grab her crown — and when I yank that down toward me, her head comes with it.
With my torso still pressed against hers, I lunge my neck forward, gripping her neck and jaw with my forehooves, tilting my muzzle and clamping my mouth hungrily to hers. Her eyes widen, and there's a snort of breath on my cheek, and the muffled start of what might have been intended as a word, and her lips are soft and warm and
* * *
SPECIAL NOTE TO READERS WHOSE JIMMIES ARE RUSTLED BY THOSE LAST THREE PARAGRAPHS:
I really want to offer you something to calm your fears — especially since a few of my prereaders had misgivings when they reached this point, as well — but the words that will help the most are Chapter 6.
Until next week, I think all I can say without spoilers is "Please trust me. It's not going where you fear[1], and it's probably not going where you think."
--
[1] On the other hoof, if you find ANY hint of shipping problematic, then I don't know what to tell you — considering that it's going to be impossible for me to finish a Hard Reset homage without a weathervane reference. I plan to stick to the limits set by the Time Loop Trilogy, though.
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As a Twilestian, I approve.
A kiss in a timeline that's going to reset soon? I don't have a problem with that, especially since Twilight did a lot more with Luna in the original.
It's almost 4 a.m. and I see a tiny glimmer of Twilestia. Even if its a minor thing and not a full on ship, it was worth staying up.
Now to wait another 5 days for the next chapter.
Digging the shipping. At least something beside knowing how to quickly kill stuff will come out of these events.
fluffybooru.org/_images/30bff997f6fd5732d6b61374716323f2/11%20-%20Animated%20Equestria%20Twilight_Sparkle%20artist%3AMixermike622%20fluffle_puff%20masturbation%20original_art%20rape.gif
I wonder what Chrysalis is doing during this little apocalypse. And how many times she must have died while Celestia pulled this off.
Well, Twilight has hit rock bottom, time to start climbing.
I'm fine with the shipping, I just hope that Twilight died first so she could do it again Except give Celly a heads-up so she doesn't blow up the world with the elements
Something crazy huh? Something like... this?
Twilight, I hope you remembered where that weather vane was..
Well.
That happened.
To be honest, I personally would have been disappointed if they didn't. In my mind, they were already close to a romantic relationship, but even if they weren't, this whole looping thing would certainly do it. Really, think about it. Celestia has been looping for centuries now, and since Luna can't anymore, she doesn't have anyone that understands what that's like. Except, now, Twilight understands. Even if she can't imagine doing it on such a scale, she knows what it's like to be trapped like this, and certainly Twilight doesn't have anyone that can relate to her experiences in the loop. In that regard, they only really have each other. With all that they've been through already, and no end clearly visible yet, how could they not feel some deeper connection?
My jimmies wouldn't have this any other way. I just hope it's more than just a kiss to be forgotten in the next loop.
Wonderful work! I love how your story holds my attention and doesn't let go, exactly like the original story. I look forward to seeing how it ends.
Kinda interesting, considering the fact that I am pretty sure in one loop she ended up in bed with Luna. So to have her now lean towards Celestia... Sheesh Twilight, pick a pony and go with her.
Is Where We Begin. I felt that I had to. And what an interesting End to Begin with, too.
It was at this point that I realized Celestia has been save-scumming. I don't know what I thought she'd been doing with the loops before, but now it's clear as day. And I feel rather dense for not realizing it earlier.
In any case, fantastic chapter, illustrating the inherent difference in magnitude between student and teacher. Twilight lets loose by shoplifting, going on a rampage with Home Run, or seducing Luna. Celestia does so by orchestrating a multi-front siege of Canterlot complete with Majora-grade apocalypse and a side of Smooze. (Do I even want to know how that got there? Wait, of course I do. The Smooze is best grape-flavored shoggoth.) Part of me wants her to send a message to Chrysalis along the lines of "Kill the Bearers, and I'll do this. Every. Single. Time." But that would probably backfire horribly.
I'm guessing that the kiss broke Celestia's concentration, prompting the White Wall of Kill Everything. Now the interesting question: did the two ponies die simultaneously?
Looking forward to more.
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[youtube=7CnOysetlQw]
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Rustled? RUSTLED!
RUSTLED!?
I wholeheartedly approve of this ship and all Twilestia weathervane references.
Bonus points for Twilunestia weathervane.
Now all we need is a bunch of dead self-insert Gary Stus littering the battlefield, and the moment will be complete~
This is going to be all kinds of awkward if Celestia died first.
The chance to go a little crazy, huh? Yeah, there's been and will be ample opportunity for that, let me tell you.
And that was the moment that I knew.
Horizon, I love you. Marry me?
oh no, wait, I died from laughing...
Marry me post-mortem?
... Except, y'know, Celestia wasn't looping at all in your original, pre-looping timeline, so those same thousands of apocalypses didn't require Celestia's sacrifice to not happen.
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Are you serious? Your pre-readers had misgivings about shipping? Have they ever BEEN to fimfiction? I like to call it the Land of the Shippers.
Or are you referring to something else? Because in all seriousness, that you're so vehemently asking people not to be too jimmy-rustled over potential shipping is outright confusing me. Are your pre-readers unabashedly opposed to romance or something? I'd love if this ship actually sailed somewhere instead of stalling on open water like you seem to be implying that it will in some strange and nonsensical attempt to appease people that I'm not sure exist.
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the better question is whether or not Chrysalis was closer to the blast than Twi or Tia.
Wait, Celestia recreated the events of Majora's Mask? XD
3870586 The elements were literally poking Twilight painfully in the side. Unless Celestia was Chrysalis, or unless any of the three had some form of resistance to white walls of death, there's no way she could have been hit or died first.
3869183 Given that this is all from Twilight's perspective, though, it's most likely that she's remembering this bit so she'll have kept the knowledge when she dies. If she DID manage to keep the knowledge then she'll go back before Celestia has a chance to reset things, and have to watch the whole destruction all over again. I really don't see a way for her to keep this knowledge without Celestially royally bucking the world, or even how she's meant to have kept it if Celestia really changed so many things before Twilight jumped into her first loop. Someone's going to have to explain this to me with a manual or a flowchart or something.
My new pet theory, assuming the credit to King Sombra in the cover image isn't a joke or red herring (which I'm actually pretty sure it is, but if it isn't), is that the loop before the first in which Twilight wasn't solo, the one before Spike first started adding "sure" to his phrase, was a solo loop in which Twilight succeeded, stopped the invasion, stopped the elements from blowing up, and continued on with her life from there. Hurray for run-on sentences! And then the Crystal Kingdom reappeared, as per show canon, and Sombra died after their adventure with the crystal heart. Sombra loops, Twilight doesn't remember ever succeeding and 'escaping' her loops because she wasn't the one that died mid-loop. If he looped back to very soon before he was blasted into a smoke monster (which wouldn't cause a loop) and took the kingdom with him, he wouldn't have had time to change much at all, which could feasibly explain how history has played out seemingly very much how it did before, for Twilight to be in the same place at the same time casting the same time-loop spell with the same assistant, the only difference with which being a single word on Spike's behalf. How this could lead to Celestia and Chrysalis looping, though, I have no idea.
I doubt I'm the first one to come up with this theory, but I don't read through much of the comments section, so /shrug. Also, it's worth noting that I don't remember at all what point in canon Hard Reset took place in, and all of this could be invalidated by it taking place after the season 3 premier.
3870577 FANfiction.net is worse. Its damn near impossible to find a good story that isn't just a ship being shot at. And the ships never go straight on those waters (I do NOT have a problem with yaoi, yuri, or whatever else you want to call it. Except Oranges. Oranges are bloody awful. )
Sums it up; unless I'm much mistaken, we're never going to get full disclosure (in-story) of anything which happened in a loop in which Twilight didn't die first; all we can get is her conjectures on what must have happened. Like, for example, at the start of this chapter, where she contemplates what she must have done to Chrysalis to make her ragequit on trying to use the rest of the mane six as hostages.
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I abandoned FF.N yeeeeaaaars ago. Believe it or not, there used to actually be some quality stories there. There still are, of course, but the sheer amount grime you have to trudge through to find it now just isn't worth it anymore. I still have a couple of ongoing stories from there bookmarked, but I don't even remember the last time I went to the site to actually find something new to read.
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I posted the author's note/comment at about 3 am and contents may have been influenced by sleep deprivation.[1]
While there may have been some shipflinching involved, my PRs did point out legitimate concerns with this particular Twilestia — the greater than usual power imbalance; the significant distrust established during earlier chapters; and the squick factor of me having explicitly described Celestia in Twilight's narration once or twice as "maternal" — and were worried that shipping would completely derail the characterization, which (based on future words) I feel is an unfounded concern, but legitimate enough to disclaimer.
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This is a significant counterpoint.
… nnh. To be honest, I wasn't expecting this to be such a non-issue once it went live. I think I'll have to massage Chapter 6 some more over the weekend.
(cc: 3869156, 3869870, 3869185)
--
[1] "Words are sold by count, not volume. Contents may settle during shipping."
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It always makes me quirk an eyebrow when people point out Celestia's maternal personality as a reason they shouldn't be together. Celestia acts motherly to all of her subjects; it's just part of who she is. Saying she shouldn't be romantically involved with anyone for that reason is like saying she shouldn't be romantically involved with anyone she's significantly older than. That's just silly. Especially considering that people are instinctually driven to find romantic partners who are both familiar and maternal, which often results in relationships with people with similarities to their mother or father. If anything, Celestia's maternal personality would help her find a loving relationship, be it with Twilight or anyone else. That Celestia seems to have been somewhat emotionally stunted from her long-term looping would be a far more legitimate concern for a potential relationship, but even then, she's showing a healthy amount of self-control with her looping habits.
I'm not arguing that you should re-plan the whole fic to involve shipping if you've already made significant progress without it, I just disagree with the 'squick factor'.
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"I'm guessing that the kiss broke Celestia's concentration, prompting the White Wall of Kill Everything. Now the interesting question: did the two ponies die simultaneously?"
They either died at the same time or Twilight died first as Celestia should naturally have more resistance to the wall-o-death (and just death in general). Them dieing at the same time would get us right into the awkward phase of their relationship while one dieing before the other leaves us with the hidden feelings part (I hope it's not that, I hate the hidden feelings part).
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Simpler reason Twilight should have died first: she's shorter and her head would naturally be closer to Celestia's saddlebags than Celestia's head would be, even if only by inches due to Celestia's head having been pulled down to meet Twilight's in a kiss.
I had a thought that seems to depend entirely on how the time loops work in this setting.
Let's say A has their anchor point at noon, and B has their anchor point at 1PM.
At some point past both their anchors, B resets 30 times. B remembers everything from all those loops, naturally, while from A's point of view, everything only happened once.
But say on the 31s loop, A resets instead. A's anchor point is earlier than B's. It seems to me that the moment A goes back, his entire loop resets... including all of B's loops. Correct? Which means B wouldn't remember any of those 30 loops, as they were reset out of existence.
If that is how it works, then the entire question becomes, who has the earliest anchor point? Because, so long as they can reset and invalidate everything the others do, they win.
Oh thank the lord. I was so very worried about the rest of the elements getting killed for the rest of time.
God damnit, Celestia. You too, Twi. Nearly had a heart attack.
3870905 Same. It really is a shame about the site though. If they would just fix the place up (especially the editing there. Pain in the ass) give the option to thumbs down some of the stories...
Would make finding good (not romance based) stories a lot easier.
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I'm not worried about who remembers it, or even if they play it out twice so they both remember it. The most important thing for me is that it isn't a sex scene (even implied), because I find Twilestia OOC (even more so than most other common ships).
Also, knowledge and memory is the only thing that carries between loops. We can forgive Twilight and Celestia for all the death and destruction they cause in loops where they stop caring or just want to cut loose, so I think we can forgive a kiss)
3871570 This Celestia has undergone crazy amounts of loneliness, as it's implied that she's been looping back to when NMM was sealed (going through all the horror, sadness and joy of a millenium), making her cold to almost all emotion. On the other hand, Twilight's undergone the same gruelling hours over and over again, giving her a very distorted view of the world (and we know that if she were to never escape, she would eventually become Queen Twilight Sparkle, supreme sadistic rapist extrordinare).
They are the only two who can grasp the true scope of each other's circumstances (giving them compatibility) and are both indeterminately older than their years (eliminating some of the squick associated with a large age gap), as well as having thrown off their previous trusting pseudo-familial relationship when Celestia didn't warn Twilight about the time loops and let her suffer alone
Twilestia may be OOC relative to the original show, but given that all loopers face character degradation due to extreme exposure to pain, death and failure, I don't really find the current development too surprising.
Honestly I'm not terribly for or against it (I don't know where it's heading, either), but I can see the justification for it.
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I didn't mind the Twiluna ship because those two don't have a student/teacher relationship bordering on mother/surrogate-daughter (depending on head canon). I don't read fics based around Twiluna, but I'm far less likely to actively avoid it like I am Twilestia.
It's implied that she looped back there at some point, but I'm pretty sure her reset point is much closer now.
So the next loop (which we don't get to see) is Celestia doing all this again and Twilight telling her to kill herself this time. That is, so long as this is the first time this kiss happened. I could see Celestia dying first just because and going Majora again because clearly Twi needs to do this thing for herself.
And what happened to Chrysalis? This is apocalypse stuff. She had to have died once or twice, then apparently retreating to watch the whole thing play out.
This does bring up whether Twi had done the thing she did with Luna when these multi-looper loops started. In my head that was the last loop previous to this story starting, but...
3871325 When B casts the loop spell, all of their loop memories return. Celestia has died before Twilight a whole heap already (re: T-34, C-0 aftermath) and when Twilight casts the spell she remembers all the loops she died first in. She has no memories of the loops where she didn't cast the spell, whether or not she died first.
I've actually got a theorised Twilestia moment occurring during an unseen loop in chapter 4. ^^ Also pleased to see Twilight mentioning the possibility of Chrysalis just coming to straight up murder her in the morning - my assumption here is that Celestia protects her too well for this. This chapter reminds me of Blueblood's moment of insanity during The Best Night Ever, although here, it's far less hilarious and far more disturbing.
This chapter also makes it more clear about the timeframe under which Celestia forces Chrysalis's invasion, which is something I couldn't quite understand in chapter 2.
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It's hard to work out exactly how the time loops work, but I don't think that answers anything. The question isn't whether they only remember looping in timelines where they do loop (In the previous example, if one of A's loops ends up preventing B from ever casting the spell, obviously B isn't going to be looping in that timeline), it's whether information is retained after an earlier loop invalidates that timeline.
Basically, imagine this:
A establishes a reset point at noon. In A's first run through, B establishes a reset point at 1PM. B then loops repeatedly, until A resets (For the first time, from their PoV), decides, "Well, that didn't work," and does something completely different immediately after noon. It's now effectively a different timeline. Even if B establishes his reset point at the same in-line time of 1PM, the situation and his prior experience is going to be different.
If he retains any knowledge of the loops in A's first run, then he's carried that information back before his reset point, which doesn't make sense. At that point he would have knowledge of the time loops before casting the spell, which seems to completely contradict what's happened in this series so far. If it did work that way, Twilight would have remembered the events of those loops before casting the spell the first time.
Unless you mean all memories of previous loops where you died, even in no-longer-existing timelines, reappear any time you cast an anchor spell... which would be rather weird, and makes the whole thing of only remembering loops you died in seem entirely arbitrary.
Wasn't there a whole bit where Celestia explained how she had to repeat things precisely so that Twilight would end up looping in the same circumstances, rather than changing things and undoing all their previous work?
But then we see knowledge carried back into the past in ways that doesn't seem to make sense, unless this is all final tweaks and variations off the very final timeline as established by the looper with the earliest reset point. That does seem like a bit of a stretch, though, as we've seen all three (known) loopers alter behavior off knowledge gained from previous loops.
The only way I can make sense of this is if Celestia has the earliest rest point, but it's too late for her to do anything to prevent Chrysalis from looping, and she's very carefully keeping everything exactly the same between her anchor point and the point where Twilight establishes her own, so that Twilight always loops with the same knowledge, rather than invalidating everything she's learned (At least on the timeline-thread we've seen in this story). Even that seems like a little bit of a stretch.
Guh. Time travel is confusing.
3871325 interesting theory.. though it seems to contradict a few things mentioned already ( in particular the T-X, C-Y method of keeping count of loops, if it did always erase the loops, twilight would Always be at 0 making keeping track near impossible)
I'd say it seems more like this.
using your example of A and B. in the event of A reseting, B would still have memorys of all previously "saved" loops, however now that the events have changed, the info gained from the 30 recorded loops becomes worthless. ( well, mostly worthless, one can't ignore the combat experience or valuable life lessons ) course, that being said, the earliest looper still has the advantage as any info they gain can't lose worth and they can still change the playing field for as long as they can come up with creative methods of changing things.
as to the Sombra Theory.. its starting to sound very plausable to me. we now know that luna can't be the 4th looper as she died in this chapter. Discords been stoned for well beyond 1000 years so he's off the table ( speaking of which.. i'm amazed that all the chaos and bloodshed celestia caused didn't wake him back up.:)leaving Sombra as the only known charicter to fit the requirements ( those being that he was hit by the elements of harmony and existed to cast it 1000 years ago) ourse, this makes me wonder how he'll come into the picture seeing as hes still on ice... perhaps a sequel hook?
3872138
Consider the "teachable moment" in Chapter 2. A is Celestia, B is Twilight. Chapter 1 happens, then A resets, then "You lied to me, Twilight," and Twilight wakes up remembering everything that happened in Chapter 1 even though everything before her loop changed and the library is now destroyed. (And again, after the Darjeeling loop, Twilight wakes up remembering the teachable moment loop even though the library's no longer destroyed around her.)
You can think of it as a memory cache that sits outside the timeline (as I imply briefly in the latest chapter). At the time of casting, the spell adds a bunch of memories into your brain from the cache, and it updates the cache every time you die. (Thus your knowledge doesn't "leak" into outside loops, at least not until you break spacetime by casting the loop spell again.)
The reason it's done that way is, bluntly, narrative necessity. If I had had memories of prior loops vanish every time that starting loop circumstances change, then the divergence between reader knowledge and character knowledge would grow untenable as the story continued.
(And yes, this formulation leads to some as-yet-unexplained oddities in the story, which are definitely explored in greater detail as it continues.)
3872235
That makes SO much more sense, thank you. I was getting confused at how things could be changing so drastically if the time loop had incredibly sharp prerequisites.
Narrative necessity aside, whether it's a necessary imprint due to the transition or whether it's an intentional effect, having an astral memory-buffer to mark every time the looper shifts universe strings/timelines is really convenient spell design.
One thing I don't get. How come Luna never reset her anchor point?
and...
Given that she didn't before this, why doesn't Celestia run to Luna first thing and have her reset her anchor to only slightly after Celestia's? Wouldn't having an extra looping alicorn around be a good thing?
The Smooze and seaponies? You snuck THE SMOOZE and SEAPONIES into this?!
You bloody brilliant bleepity-bleep, you!
Also, this is strategically valuable. They can rig stuff so it'll be so thoroughly wrecked if Chrysalis is 'winning' that she'll have to change tactics.
Right?
Anyone who gets their jimmies rustled over this clearly hasn't read the original. I can't wait to find out what kind of noises Celestia makes when Twilight uses the weathervane on her.
3872673 Her reset point was from her Nightmare Moon period, and the only way to get her from past to present would be to go back, get banished to the moon for 1000 years (which would be agonizing beyond belief), then live events up until a new anchor point after getting hit by the elements.
3872235
Unless the story were to all happen in the same timeline, but yeah, I see what you mean. I think it all makes sense now, at least as much as time-travel stuff can make sense.