Alternate Ending
Celestia glared defiantly through the crumbling ceiling at her distant sun, which glared defiantly back through the unnatural blizzard. The same bitter snow that pelted her face and melted against her chitinous skin blanketed the raised dais that once bore the Elements, and if she strained her ears, she could hear the neighing of windigos.
The windigos were invisible against the frosty, lifeless sky, but they were there, galloping on the biting wind like ethereal vultures waiting for her to die so they could feast on the now-rotting corpse of Equestria's harmony that she'd struggled to protect for the past thousand years.
Celestia was a fool to believe her subjects would accept her, and a greater fool to believe they wouldn't realize her mother and sister were changelings and reject them as well. Her subjects, it seemed, were smarter than she'd given them credit for. In the inhospitable hell of a world they'd brought upon themselves, they'd need to be.
Cadence and Luna lay curled up on either side of her to conserve warmth, but chitin provided little insulation, and they'd succumbed to hypothermia hours ago. It wouldn't kill them, of course. They'd slowly starve just like her, but death would take them gently and peacefully in their sleep. She envied them.
Celestia grimaced as another pang of hunger reminded her how empty her heart was. She had taken to swallowing mouthfuls of snow to trick her body, and if that didn't work, freeze herself from the inside out. While it accomplished the latter admirably, she was still awake and aware. She cursed her sun for protecting her from the cold. She wanted to believe there was still hope, that even without her, the Elements would be enough to fight back the advancing tide of darkness. Alas, she knew all too well that without her love and care, the transformation would kill Twilight just like it did Platinum.
***
Twilight knew too, but she wasn't one to go down without a fight. She had barricaded herself in Platinum's old quarters, which had remained untouched since Platinum's death and contained many a grimoire of forgotten magic that Celestia hadn't had the heart to lock away in the Canterlot Archives. Twilight was thankful for small blessings like that, for a heavy crashing had just joined the rising crescendo outside her door as the mob scouring the castle gathered in hopes of manifesting its collective desire to see her lynched over the battlements. She'd sooner melt the flesh from their bones than give them the pleasure, but she only had so much magic, and she had to conserve it. The ancient ritual she was attempting would be taxing.
She had been spared the infernal voices Luna and Platinum had experienced, so she had little trouble focusing on the archaic description of the preparations for a hexagram of amplification. Twilight had to resort to holding the chalk and drawing the lines by telekinesis, however, as the insectoid mutations being forced upon her mammalian body were slowly tearing it apart.
She finished the sixth and final glyph between the two concentric circles bordering the central hexagram and shambled inside on her atrophied legs and crumbling hooves just as several slivers of light pierced the straining wooden door where the mob's persistent battering had splintered the wood.
She ignored the mob's shouts of horror and disgust at the cadaverous half-changeling abomination she'd become, closed her one good eye, and concentrated on laying the framework of her teleportation spell as she had a hundred times before. The difference was that the ambient magic absorbed through her pores and concentrated around her horn was amplified a hundredfold into a blinding lavender corona that sent the mob falling over itself as it fled in terror.
When the magic building inside her, coursing through her veins, and struggling for release reached critical mass, she knew the spell was ready. All she had to do was give it a destination. Thinking back to the very first memory Celestia had imparted on her, Twilight vanished in a burst of light, heat, and magic that anypony unfortunate enough to be watching would only perceive through the agony of his eyes popping and gushing from their sockets like the yolks of poached eggs.
Hexagrams of amplification had fallen out of favor in the past few centuries for their contraindication with already-powerful magic, which manifested when the excess teleportation magic vaporized a spherical chunk of Canterlot Castle a hundred yards across, splitting all matter within into its individual atoms and scattered them over the city as magical fallout.
***
Discord sat in the throne room with a wine of glass clutched in his claw as he looked out across Equestria, for he had lifted what remained of the castle into the sky adjacent to its former resting place on the mountainside and turned it into an exact replica painstakingly molded from rainbow-colored gelatin so it wouldn't obstruct his view of the world beyond.
Contemplating how best to antagonize his newly inherited nation full of playthings once they washed the lactose out of their fur—for he had transformed the localized blizzard into a hail of ice cream scoops in a variety of flavors, whose impacts with his gelatin fortress made the entire structure jiggle—he became vaguely aware of a yellow pegasus pony whose hooves made impressions in the floor as she politely tried to get his attention. Absently, he asked, "Can I help you?"
"Well, yes, actually. My friends and I..." Fluttershy trailed off as he turned to face her fully with a faraway look as if he wasn't focusing on her so much as the distant scenery directly behind her. She turned to see that he was actually locked in a staring contest with Pinkie, who stood alongside Applejack, Dash, and Rarity.
"How did you get up here?" Discord asked in bemusement.
"Take a guess," Pinkie deadpanned, ruffling her pink, feathery wings.
"Ah, yes," Discord said, vaguely remembering turning all of Twilight's friends into what alicorns would be if such things existed so they wouldn't have to feel alienated once Twilight became one. In retrospect, he couldn't fathom why he'd cared. Still, he figured it'd be worth it to see their mortal friends, family, and lovers die around them. "Well, whatever you want, make it quick. I'm kind of busy."
"As I was saying," Fluttershy continued, forcing a weak smile as he turned his impatient gaze back on her, "my friends and I were hoping... Well, you see, Equestria has been in a bad place since it realized its princesses had been abducted by a group of changeling queens who had the audacity to show their true forms in public. We understand chaos is your thing and all, but we really don't think it's what Equestria needs right now, so we were just wondering if maybe you'd be so kind as to step down from the throne and give us the reigns of government so we could restore order to the land. That's all."
Throughout her needlessly wordy speech, an insane smirk had crept across Discord's face. "Really? You thought you could just fly into my castle and ask me to step down? Well, I suppose you've demonstrated your ability to do just that, but I'm afraid I have to decline. Now, off with you!"
"What about our friendship?" Fluttershy pleaded. "Don't you care what happens to Equestria, to me?"
"Let me ask you this, Fluttershy," Discord said, finally remembering their names. "Would you ever make Rainbow Dash choose between you and her dream of joining the Wonderbolts? Would you ever make Pinkie Pie choose between you and her need to throw parties? Don't answer that. I know you wouldn't, which begs the question: why would you make me choose between you and my need to sow discord and reap chaos? What kind of friend would that make you?"
"Buck this!" Dash shouted, her wings flaring. "We're alicorns now. Why don't we just kick his flank like Celestia and Luna did?"
Discord took a sip of glass from his wine, set it down on his armrest, and snapped his talons.
"My wings!" Dash cried as her wings disappeared in a poof of sparkling sky-blue dust, though her shock soon gave way to indignation at his lack of creativity as she remembered him pulling the same trick the first time he took over Equestria.
"That's why. I'm the one who made you alicorns, but the change is far from permanent. If you want to stop me and save Equestria, you won't do it with magical rainbows. You'll do it by proving that harmony is what truly lies in ponies' hearts. For your information, pony, Luna had no part in my defeat, and just like you, Celestia only succeeded by striking me while my guard was down—a cheap trick for an allegedly reformed changeling. Yes, you heard correctly. Your princesses haven't been abducted by changelings. They are changelings. They always have been, and as we speak, they're starving in the Everfree ruins because you ponies were too bigoted and intolerant to accept that, so I ask you, my little ponies, who's the real monster here?"
"We don't have to listen to this," Dash said, drew back her hoof, leveled her horn, and charged.
"Some ponies never learn," Discord sighed, snapped his talons again, and frowned when her screaming as she plummeted through the opening he'd created in the gelatin beneath her hooves brought him far less amusement than he'd expected.
"You seem to have answered your own question," Rarity said before diving through the hole after Dash, followed by Applejack, who must have realized Rarity wasn't nearly strong enough to catch Dash by herself.
Discord watched with mild interest as they swooped down and rescued Dash a scant few hundred yards above the ground. He had considered taking away their wings too and narrowing the annoying dissidents he'd have to deal with in the coming days down to Pinkie and Fluttershy but reasoned that that would be much less fun. He made a mental note to restore Dash's wings when he got around to it.
"Hey!" Fluttershy shouted, flitting over to hover in his face and stare him down in one of her rare moments of assertiveness. "Just who do you think you are?"
Discord replied in a bored monotone, "Discord, physical manifestation of the pony races' thousand years of infighting prior to their unification and Celestia and Luna's arrival from the changeling hive. That's not who I think I am, by the way, it's who I know I am. We spirits know exactly who we are and what we're meant to do, and I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that I'm meant to expedite Equestria's descent into a new dark age."
He stood erect and raised his long, snake-like neck to its full height so that he towered over Fluttershy, who wilted to the floor under the predatory ferocity of his glare and further still at the cutting tone with which he asked, "The real question, Fluttershy, is what makes you think you have the right to order around a god? Just who do you think you are?"
"I..." Fluttershy looked to be on the verge of tears, but seemed to recover when she felt Pinkie's presence beside her. "I'm sorry, Discord. God or not, I never meant to order you around. I just thought... I thought our friendship meant something to you... I can see now that I was wrong."
"I think I understand."
"You do?" Fluttershy asked with cautious hope in her glistening cyan eyes.
"Oh yes, I understand perfectly. When asking nicely doesn't get your way, you try throwing your weight around, and when you meet someone who's sensible enough to realize how much stronger he is, you declare all bets off and roll out the crocodile tears in hopes of guilt tripping him into submission. You're a manipulator, plain and simple."
"I'm not manipulating you!"
"You're not doing a very good job," Discord said, slumped back into his throne, finished his glass, and tossed the wine aside. Predictably, it exploded on contact and flung bits of gelatin everywhere, including on him and Pinkie, whose body shielded Fluttershy. The defiant seriousness in Pinkie's expression as bits of gelatin slid down her face should have had him in stitches, but it failed to draw so much as a smile.
"I grow tired of this game, Fluttershy," he continued. "You never liked me for being me. You always wanted to change me. We were never friends, and we never will be. I can accept that. I can accept that nopony would ever want to be friends with the physical manifestation of everything ponies hate about themselves. I could even accept, even respect your unscrupulous methods of pursuing your agenda, but there's one thing I just can't accept."
"What's that?"
"You don't have your own agenda! All your life has been spent tending to others, helping others achieve their dreams. That's all you want in life, and it makes me sick. You have no dreams of your own. You might as well be a pep-talking puppet that other ponies can use and discard as they please without worrying about retribution. In fact..." Discord trailed off and snapped his talons once more. Where Fluttershy had knelt a moment before, a simple pink-and-yellow sock puppet pegasus pony with big cyan buttons for eyes lay limply against the floor.
Then came the screaming, followed by the sobbing and muttering as Pinkie passed swiftly through the stages of grief in no particular order. She looked up at him, all defiance gone, and asked meekly, "Why, Discord? Why would you do that? Friend or not, you don't just turn ponies into sock puppets! That's not like you! You manipulate them, turn them against each other, and even make them wish they were dead, but you don't kill them!"
Discord stepped down from his throne, knelt before her, picked up the sock puppet, and slid it over his paw. He moved its mouth instead of his as he spoke in a resonant mockery of Fluttershy's voice, "Ponies who've studied biology know conflict is written on their genes, but they willfully preserve a sanctuary of ignorance in which they can believe the past thousand years marked ponykind's transcendence over its base instincts when all they really accomplished was bottling up all their hatred and intolerance. They repressed it and repressed it, and like a powder keg that's no longer want for a spark, they've found their excuse to let it all out. From now on, you and your friends will be living in a world where 'survival of the fittest' is the rule, so you'd better adapt quick."
Visibly struggling not to throw up, Pinkie said in a quavering voice, "I don't believe that. Equestria may have killed its princesses, and you may have disbanded the Elements, but harmony will never die unless we stop fighting for it. Conflict may be in our nature, but only animals are bound by their nature."
After watching her turn tail and run out the door, presumably to regroup with her friends, Discord fell on his haunches, the floor jiggling under him like a water bed. Tears welling in his eyes, he held the sock puppet up, stared into its artificial, unblinking eyes, and sobbed, "I wish you were right."
***
Chrysalis sees all this and more as she expends the last of her energy on a remote-viewing spell. Gazing over the world she destroyed, she smiles. She wants to think harmony is dead and she killed it herself, but neither is completely true. She orchestrated its assassination, but she wasn't the one who plunged the dagger into its heart. She didn't need to be. Equestria did that all by itself.
In truth, harmony was never alive in the first place. If it were, Equestria wouldn't be freezing over, her mother and sister wouldn't be dying in exile, and most importantly, her hive wouldn't have starved. The changelings she besieged Canterlot with were already artifacts of an extinct race. The long-dead chitinous husks scattered throughout the hive are all that remains of the rest. She's no one's queen anymore. She's just an embittered old changeling waiting on death's doorstep to be let in.
The sprawling tunnels around her are as silent as a catacomb, and the glowing fungi that flourished in her mother's time have all but gone dark, so the nearby flash and pop of teleportation magic catches her attention immediately. It's about time, she thinks to herself, trying to lift her head to greet the newcomer and predictably failing. Her vestigial magic is still strong for a changeling, but her body gave out days ago, and she's been lying on the floor ever since. Whatever vengeance the newcomer has planned will be a mercy.
Exhausted from the journey, Twilight collapses on arrival, but she doesn't have far to go. The last iota of life she can detect in the entire hive is coming from the next chamber. She can only assume Chrysalis anticipated her arrival, and for whatever reason, wanted to make herself easily found. Inch by inch, she drags her limp body forward on the crumbled, bony remains of her front hooves, each yard feeling like a mile.
Facing the other way, Chrysalis doesn't see the newcomer's face but hears the chipping of hooves, recognizes the dwindling life force entering the chamber as Twilight's, and says, "Welcome home, Twilight Sparkle. I wondered when you'd finally arrive. To think that this is how it ends—with you dragging a body that's hardly yours across the cold bedrock so you can know the pleasure of taking my life before my curse takes yours and me laying here completely powerless to stop you from doing me that mercy—is all too amusing, and that's not even the punchline."
Twilight doesn't respond. Having crossed the floor during Chrysalis's reminiscing, she rolls her onto her back and straddles her chitinous belly under the sickly-green ambient light.
Despite the hatred in Twilight's glowing green eyes and red irises manifesting in the familiar purple miasma of black magic, conjuring a black crystalline stiletto out of thin air, and aiming the long, slender blade at her exposed throat, Chrysalis continues unabated, "The punchline, my dear Twilight, is that none of this would have been possible without you."
Twilight raises the stiletto into the air before plunging it through the chitinous skin of Chrysalis's neck, piercing Chrysalis's trachea with a cartilaginous crunch. She watches dispassionately as the malevolent blade greedily sucks the the magical essence from Chrysalis's body.
Chrysalis coughs up greenish-black ichor, her struggling breaths ceasing and the haunting emerald light fading from her reptilian eyes.
"I know," Twilight whispers, unsheathing the blade from Chrysalis's neck, wiping the ichor off in her faded mane, and turning the stiletto on herself. She gasps, her pupils becoming pinpricks as the point penetrates the tender skin below her sternum and slides smoothly through the various chambers of her spasming heart.
Her vision blurring and the searing pain of her magical essence being sundered from her body numbing her thoughts, she lowers her gaze to see bright crimson blood matting her fur against her skin, dripping down the length of the stiletto, trickling over Chrysalis's pale body, and pooling on the cavern floor around them. Her balance wavering, she falls onto Chrysalis's chest, her head laid across Chrysalis's neck. As silence fills the hive, the world turns to black.
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Catharsis being the purpose of tragedy, I hope you find reading the alternate ending as cathartic as I found writing it.
2137648
But if this was the sad alternate ending, where's the happy real ending where they're accepted?
2137648
actually it made me thumbs down the entire story.
by the way, if Discord exists because of Harmony then in the absence of Harmony why doesn't he cease to exist.
2137900
I always personally thought of Chaos as being the dominant one, with Harmony being a temporary thing that occurs every once in a while. Basically, Chaos can exist without Harmony, but not vice versa.
Hmm... Disappointing that the equestrians are so unaccepting of, and blind to the truth.
2137945
then why did Harmony need to exist before Discord came into being?
Well, I'm going to go kill myself now.
And here I thought I was reading a story that would make me feel nice and that the tragedy was just Luna being banished or something... goddamn it I'm just going to favorite this huge pile of feelsy bullshit and go write depressing things in my diary (which I don't actually have)
I hope you can somehow go to sleep tonight without the fear of someone hunting you down, i won't, of course, much too lazy...
Are you going to write a sequel to the original end?
Muahahahahahaaaaaa
2137648
I love you so much right now.
"In Love and War" has been bumped back to the top of the "to read" list.
2137779
Magical Mystery Cure is the happy ending, as this entire story, minus the alternate ending, is a prequel.
2137900
I don't know what to say about Discord other than that he didn't need to take physical form before harmony arrived.
2137993
They have a bad track record with changeling queens appearing in place of their princesses.
2138112
Take heart, comrade, for this is just what could have happened were Equestria a more cynical world.
2138220
You should have known, but for what it's worth, this is probably the darkest thing I'll write for awhile. It's not exactly my cup of tea.
2138304
Given my statements above, I think a continuation of this divergent path as an entire alternate universe would be much more interesting.
2138485
I'm glad someone liked this as much as I did. Earlier, I was secretly glad someone was as unsatisfied as I was. This was cathartic for serving justice on the story itself.
2139241 dang and I was about to suggest Odiphous Olyndra's Breaking Twilight. It's a good fic about twilight killing herself to save Equestria(Celestia) during Nightmares Return and Ensuing reign.
2139274
I had plans for a story where Twilight becomes a revolutionary and personally assassinates Celestia, but there's no point now that I've written something so similar. At your suggestion, I may check out Breaking Twilight anyway.
When it comes to [Grimdark] AU endings, this is up there. Although, Not My Destiny's planetary extinction still remains in first place.
A good story overall. For some reason, I always like the fanfics that weave their crazy plots in between canon.
2145248
If there's a way to top planetary extinction, I'll find it next time I write something like this.
Twilight did a big mistake, she should not transform until Celestia revealed herself, so in case ponies would not accept her or them, Twilight love alone would keep them alive at the worse, and then Twilight would convince her friends and Shinning Armor so they can help too.
How did Twilight end up as half changeling ?
2167432
Twilight and Celestia's decision to have sex in the heat of the moment became their undoing when their plan that hinged on their subjects' trust fell apart.
Twilight put way too much effort into that murder-suicide for it to be an end rather than a means, IMO.
2205745
I'm not sure I understand your meaning.
2207406 I was expecting her mission to have some purpose with respect to solving or ameliorating the crises Equestria, Celestia, or herself were suffering, but then she just committed suicide after killing Chrysalis and there doesn't seem to be an indication that will accomplish anything beyond the simple fact of their deaths. Did I miss something? Why was Twilight that determined to kill Chrysalis? Was her own situation really so hopeless that she declined to search (or continue searching) for a solution? Was there no more productive way to spend her final hours?
2208119
The last living changelings were Celestia, Luna, Cadence, and Chrysalis, who were starving and too weak to help. Her body tearing itself apart, Twilight chose to kill Chrysalis and herself to have that satisfaction and end their misery.
2239770
I forget in which chapter Platinum stabs herself with a shard of glass, but that's the allusion to gore. The only other especially gory part is in the alternate ending, which goes far beyond allusion.
There is only one hive and one queen. Celestia and Luna became something resembling queens because they cut themselves off from the hive, which is also why they can't control anypony they assimilate. I assume queens are the only ones who can safely assimilate other races, but in all three in-story cases, circumstances prohibited the responsible queens from helping.
2137945
According to thermodynamics, you are right. Organization and harmony are but transient things that come into existence briefly only to disappear again in the raging malstrom of energy that makes up the universe.
2240001
Taking quotes out of context doesn't help people win religious debates, and it won't help either of us here. I'd advise you to read more carefully, as the answers are there if you look for them, but I doubt you will, so I'll give you the short explanations.
The first quote refers to Celestia and Luna's telepathy, which is different from and weaker than the connection mentioned in the second quote, which is just as intense as what Platinum experienced.
As for the third quote, Luna had exhausted her magical energy in enchanting the Elements, which is a one-time event, and left herself vulnerable because she didn't think herself capable of being attacked. Not only will Celestia not be weakened the same way, she knows to be careful.
As for the fourth quote, I spent several paragraphs explaining how integral divination magic was to her efforts to prepare for Luna's return. I didn't explicitly state that she did the same to discern the exact date, but the reader should be able to put two and two together.
As for the fifth quote, changeling queens are master illusionists. If that doesn't sit well with you, I don't know what to tell you, because as far as I'm concerned, that's their race's defining characteristic.
If I seem on edge, chalk it up to me being put in the position of defending a story I'm none too fond of myself.
Interesting concept from start to finish, and it's always nice to see a story that earns the Sex and Gore tags in service of the narrative rather than pursuing them as its destination. I think Discord probably should have had more time to shine in his original appearance, but his resurgence in the alternate ending more than makes up for it. His last line of dialogue... hot damn.
2381408
I have mixed feelings about this story, but your comment reminds me of some of the reasons why people like it, so thank you for that. Discord's first appearance was shoehorned in at the last minute while trying to maintain the sixteen-scene structure, but his second, like the other scenes in the alternate ending, is an attempt to make up for what I considered lacking in the main story.
Hello there, The Fool. B_P from WRITE here, responding to your request for a review. Let’s get into it, shall we?
Mechanics:
There are one-off errors here and there, such as the following, from the first chapter:
You had refreshingly few consistent errors, but there were enough one-off errors that I’d say going through the story a few more times, or getting a skilled proofreader or two to do so, wouldn’t be a bad idea.
That said, there still were consistent errors, if only a few. For one, have a look at this tidbit from the first chapter:
That comma that leads into the dialogue should be a full stop instead, as there’s no speaking verb in the narration. Think of the narration that leads into a string of dialogue as a sort of preemptive dialogue tag; if there’s no speaking verb in the narration, then it isn’t actually a dialogue tag, and must be considered as separate from the dialogue. See this similar issue here:
“Delivered” is not being used as a speaking verb here (even though it can function as one in other contexts), so a comma rather than a full stop is inappropriate. I will note that you were far better with dialogue punctuation than most folks I tend to read the stories of, but you weren’t perfect.
An odd issue I noticed cropping up every now and again was counterintuitive lead-ins to some sentences, particularly the first sentence of a given paragraph. Take this example:
If the city looks recognizable but still bears vestiges of its earlier form, how are the princesses’ familiar heights alongside their un-magical manes and lack of cutie marks any different? It can’t rightly be called a contrast. This problem proceeded to come up in different forms at least a couple more times.
Another sort of oddity that I came across—much sillier this time—was a few instances of very strange similes.
Is bioluminescent seaweed often called upon for its propensity to cascade? Is softness and a tingling sensation really indicative of existence between the physical and magical realms? The way these are worded, they just come off as strangely specific statements. I do see what you were going for, but I don’t think you thought them and their wording out quite as well as you probably should have.
There was also the occasional change in perspective, as in the following:
The perspective had been third person limited up until that point (which made sense, given that Twilight was only experiencing the memories of Celestia), but there we’re let into Luna’s mind as well. Hell, sometimes there’s even entire scenes narrated with Luna’s perspective (e.g. raising the moon), despite how much that flies in the face of the nature of the flashback. Beyond that, there’s also been mentions of how Celestia looks juxtaposed with how Twilight is feeling, despite the fact that Twilight wouldn’t know how Celestia looks so much as she would experience the face Celestia is making.
Times where you attempted to convey a bit too much information in a single sentence cropped up here and there, as well. See the following almost-run-on for an example:
Heck, there’s a parenthetical within a list of actions in there. It was very awkward to read, and this isn’t the only instance of this sort of thing, so again, I’d suggest you find someone skilled to look this over or go through it again more carefully yourself.
I think the last thing I’d like to point out, mechanics-wise, is that you had quite a few sentences wherein “she” and “her” and such were used to refer to more than one character. It interrupted the flow every now and again, having to go back and parse who’s doing what. I’d suggest adding in a bit more specification in appropriate areas.
Plot:
The first scene of the first chapter was a strange read for a couple of reasons. Right off the bat, we’re thrown into this situation with Twilight seeing Celestia in changeling form. There’s no buildup to this scene whatsoever, and little is described here apart from Celestia’s appearance and the motions the two go through as they talk. Where are they? When is this? The only sense of setting given is that this takes place before Magical Mystery Cure, and that was outright told to us in the story’s description. And why present tense? You do away with it right as the next scene begins—despite seeming to take place right after the first scene chronologically, the second scene (and nearly all of the rest of the story) is written in past tense. The past tense ends, semi-logically, after the flashback does, but I still don’t understand why you utilized different tenses at all, as the flashback is shown to us realtime with Twilight’s reactions included.
A final note on the first scene: without the buildup, the phrase
left me pondering for a while. Right there, it’s implied that we (and likely Twilight herself) are about to experience Celestia’s memories, so the “second time” line makes me wonder if they did this earlier as well. Or perhaps it referred to the figurative feeling Twilight experienced earlier upon finding Celestia in changeling form? Or maybe the world literally fell out from under her hooves before, i.e. Twilight fainted when she found out? Without the buildup, the phrase is nigh meaningless, but it’s the last thing you leave us with in that scene.
After that first scene, I’d say things became much more interesting. Descriptions of setting tended to be a little lacking (e.g. you described the city of Canterlot as “bearing vestiges of its military past”, but gave no specifics), but there was actually a progressive story—with a real beginning—and it was a very interesting read, for the most part. There were definitely some problem areas, however.
Let’s talk about the evening of Celestia and Luna’s third day there in Equestria, wherein they arrive at the castle. This scene is cut to immediately after we’re shown what amounts to the pair’s first half hour or so in Equestria. Now, when I first saw that, I was fine with it. I said to myself, “I suppose they’ve just been travelling that whole time between scenes, and nothing of any note occurred.” But as the narrative soon reveals, the skipped time was actually fairly important:
In that lost space of time, Twilight’s consciousness became increasingly more blurred with Celestia’s? That would have been a very interesting thing to actually see the beginnings of. When I began reading this story, I fully expected to see “the crumbling psychic barrier between Twilight and Celestia”, as you put it in your note to WRITE. What I did not expect was that a good portion of the early stages of it would be cut out of the story and glossed over with a single awkward, incredibly telly sentence. I’m starting to sense a trend here—your buildup sometimes seems to amount to whatever the reader happens to imagine having happened after you thrust him/her into a new situation. This is an issue, as it removes a lot of potential for interesting scenes of exposition in addition to making the scenes that are there feel just that much more forced and disconnected.
On the note of the psychic barrier: aside from the consistent use of “Twilight” in place of “Celestia”, just about the only way you ever see fit to let us know that their identities are becoming muddled is by outright telling us. We don’t really see Twilight falling into it, and we don’t really see any big results from it, so to be honest, it actually feels a lot less integral to the plot than you made it out to be in your note to WRITE. This isn’t to say that it wasn’t interesting, but it just didn’t feel all that impactful, and that’s a shame. You’d said you wanted advice “streamlining” it, but I’ll admit that I don’t quite know what you’re getting at. If you clarify, I’d happily offer a more in-depth opinion on the subject.
Beyond that, the plot was very engaging. Your proposed canon worked wonderfully in almost all areas (most areas where I thought it fell flat are down in my list of plotholes). Still, I don’t quite understand why most everything seemed to have to take place all within the span of a few days or weeks. So many sweeping changes and horrible/horrifying occurrences all within such a short span of time—you’d think the ponies would start to become at least a bit wary of their new rulers. And also, I’m just going to outright say it: the plot regarding Cadance felt very forced (less who she was and more how it was all handled). The “let’s wave our magic wands and make the plot holes disappear” kind of forced—it was probably the only part of the story I genuinely disliked reading.
Lastly, I just want to cover some random plotholes and canon inconsistencies I believe I encountered:
1.) Why does Luna, right from the get-go, use the royal “we”? Not even their mother did (and her use of contractions like “I’m” was confusing enough in its own way), so I can’t imagine where she might’ve gotten the habit. Interestingly, Luna no longer does this later, even after having been crowned. There’s not even a sufficiently long amount of time after the coronation for her to pick the habit back up in time for her imprisonment on the moon, so now things seem to be arguing with canon somewhat. And not a single mention of Royal Canterlot Voice, either.
2.) In Chapter II, Princess Platinum says the following:
I’m fairly sure, however, that not even a day had passed since Celestia and Luna’s arrival at the castle. They came one evening, took Puddinghead’s challenge, slept, took Hurricane’s challenge, and then this conversation occurred in what seemed to be the late afternoon. Doesn’t match up with what Platinum says.
3.) Until the scene with Platinum’s change, neither Celestia nor Luna had ever been referred to by name, which I figured was because they had no names, either as ponies or in general. There, though, Platinum calls Celestia “Celestia”, so I suppose either they were named in the interim (short though it may have been) between that scene and the coronation before it, or you might have just forgotten about it. I suppose this is less of a plothole and more of a “that’s a scene I would have liked to have seen” type of thing.
4.) Did Hurricane and Puddinghead not even look at Platinum’s body?… What the heck did Celestia say to the two of them?
5.) In canon, a stained glass window depicts what seem to be both Celestia and Luna circling Discord, sealing him, and Celestia speaks of herself and her sister standing up to him. I can imagine Celestia having spread lies and misinformation gradually, and commissioning that window after everyone who was alive to know the true order of events was dead, but it’s a stretch, and I find myself unable to come up with a decent reason for her to have gone with that course of action.
6.) During A Canterlot Wedding, what possible reason could Chrysalis have had to not reveal Celestia as a changeling once her plan had gone south and she’d been made to turn to the brute force of her army? She had Celestia beaten and battered on the ground in front of her, so I imagine she could have overpowered Celestia’s illusion at any time.
7.) This one’s rather obvious, but… The ending (i.e. the end of Chapter IV) doesn’t really jive with canon. I can’t see Celestia having done what Twilight suggested she do. Not out of the context of this story, at any rate. I mean, even if at first she just revealed herself offscreen to the ponies of her court, that doesn’t cover Twilight’s seemingly sweeping desire to do away with the Masquerade for the purposes of having everyone love Celestia for who she is. Canon would disprove this eventuality simply by continuing.
Overall:
Overall, this was a very good read. You started with an excellent premise, and while I don’t feel you did quite as much with it as I thought you probably should have, what you did do was quite captivating. Inconsistencies with canon failed to approach suspension of disbelief almost entirely for me, so I was able to enjoy this as some very interesting world-building. Mechanical issues were far from a deal-breaker, and that says a lot coming from me, really.
In general, I wish there would have been more description, I wish you would have shown more than told in regards to the whole melding psyches thing (among a few other things), and I wish you had given us more buildup and stretched the story out over a longer period of time in Celestia’s life, but still. You did some good work here, and I’m happy to have read it. And that alternate ending? Loved it. I was waiting the whole time for the Tragedy tag to actually pull its weight, and I certainly got it there.
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-- Burraku_Pansa, WRITE's Trainer Admin and Resident Namesmith
2479101
Thank you for taking the time to review my story. The depth you go into is remarkable in itself, and I have no doubt your insight will prove invaluable when the time comes to make revisions. While many of the issues you point out--such as my general lack of buildup and attempts to cram as much information into sentences as possible at the expense of clarity--are indefensible, I can shed light on a few. If I don't mention something, it's either easily remedied or not something I've figured out how to remedy, but I'm not discounting the validity of the things I do mention.
1. Hurricane does indeed need to be protected from Puddinghead.
2. In contrasting Celestia and Luna with the city that's presumably as old as they are, my aim was to point out that while it was relatively constant, they were already undergoing substantial changes. That said, the city losing the vestiges of its military past, whatever those may be, in the years that follow is roughly equivalent, so there really is no contrast save for the time frame.
3. Bioluminescent seaweed is awesome and demands mentioning at every opportunity, though that may prove problematic in my upcoming story where sea ponies deck their cities with the stuff.
4. Regardless of how indicative tingling sensations are of magical composition, somepony casts a spell earlier in the narrative with magic pulled directly from the ambient magical field, meaning the magical and physical realms are one and the same. We could be talking about Hades, but that's another story.
5. Celestia and Luna each know what the other is thinking because, like all changelings, they're telepathically linked. Being inside Celestia's head, Twilight is privy to any instance where Celestia dips into Luna's. Thus, there shouldn't be any instances where we see Luna's thoughts without Celestia being nearby. Finally, you're right in that Twilight ought to feel what Celestia's doing rather than see it. Any point at which she explicitly does the latter is an instance of either her watching herself from somepony else's perspective for some reason or me being neglectful.
6. You guessed correctly that the first time Twilight's world fell out from under her hooves was the moment of discovery.
7. I was experimenting with shifting between past and present tense at the time, and while I thought it made sense, your point that Twilight experiences the memories in the present is a sound argument for revision.
8. The crumbling psychic barrier was very jarring to the pre-reader, who neglected to elaborate. I assumed the issue would crop up again for you, but since you have little to say about it save that it's hardly there in the first place, I can only assume that how jarring it is is a matter of personal taste. I consider it integral because it's a key aspect of Twilight's experiencing history through Celestia's eyes, which is one of the things that sets this story apart from the myriad others with similar premises. That it only exists as an orphaned subplot is the real issue, and my future efforts to develop it can only make it more palatable. I don't doubt that I originally glossed over it because I didn't know how to portray it.
9. Don't even get me started on Cadence. If she doesn't die in the alternate ending--which was really just my way of crucifying everything I didn't like about the original story--she will by the time I'm done with revisions. If those revisions make her a more natural, likable character, so much the better.
10. The royal "we" was supposed to be changeling in origin, as all lesser changelings are collective. The queens and their most favored subjects are the only ones with individuality. The queens rightly use "I," but the subjects still use "we" as a show of deference.
11. I could have sworn I named the princesses at some point, but if I didn't, or if that point was after Platinum's death, I must have erred, as I wouldn't intentionally gloss over something like that.
12. Celestia may have telepathically manipulated Hurricane and Puddinghead if necessary. I didn't really give it much thought.
13. Chrysalis may have been able to dispel Celestia's illusion, but ponies would have seen that Celestia was trying to protect them despite being a changeling. Damaging Celestia's ability to maintain that illusion so it fails further down the line when there's no immediate threat for her to prove her good intentions by opposing makes for a sensible contingency plan.
14. Despite Twilight's suggestion, Celestia only reveals herself in the canon of the alternate ending. In the canon ending, Magical Mystery Cure, Celestia exercised her knowledge of divination magic to foresee the fall of Equestria and decided her ponies weren't ready so soon after a changeling invasion and may not be for many years.
I realize that explaining these things after the fact doesn't change that they were unclear in the story itself, but it does help me figure out how to clear them up when I finally get around to revising a week or so from now. With luck, it'll offer you a semblance of closure without reading the revised version.
2482432
Couple of notes as response.
To point #1, "Pfft." I'd thought the threat was Celestia and Luna…
To #2, I mean, both still seemed familiar but had vestiges (retainment of military things, retainment of link to hive/lack of cutie marks), and would go on to lose them as time went on. At that particular moment, this instant of arriving, there was not an immediate contrast of any sort—time frame is a contrast only in hindsight, and hindsight was not something Twilight possessed right then.
To #4 (and sort of #3, though you were being silly), you probably get this, but my point was that it it's fine to give us the description by way of a comparison, but similes really require the evocation of something that can really be called familiar. The wording just made it seem like you were trying to create similes with things that the reader would have no experience in, and not in any purposeful/silly sort of way.
To #5, that really should have come out in the story. I don't recall being given the sense that their telepathy went any deeper than messages, at least with each other. That Twilight would make no mention of seeing through Luna's eyes through Luna's thoughts through Celestia's head through Celestia's memories, as confusing an experience as that must have been for her, strikes me as odd.
To #6, you already seem to understand this, but just the same: I shouldn't have had to guess. A buildup for that scene would have made a lot of difference.
To #7, by that I hope you mean you'll shift it all to past rather than all to present? I mean, it's your story and all, but I just tend to find that past tense reads more naturally and plays far more nicely with third-person perspective.
To #10, that's actually a very interesting explanation, and it fully explains why Luna would be stuck in "we" mode after her return (though not about RCV, unless the voices in her head were so loud that she got into the habit of shouting to hear herself, or somesuch). That it didn't seem to come out in the story is certainly a shame.
To #13, that makes a good amount of sense, though I recall being given the impression that the side effects with Celestia's growing inability to maintain her illusion were unintended. Perhaps I misread, though.
To #8, #9, #11, and #14, all good things to hear.
And in general, I'm happy I could be of service. Do let me know if/when it's revised—again, I liked this story quite a bit, and I'd love to see the changes.
2482926
I actually had no idea similes were supposed to conjure familiar images for the reader. I've always used them to turn mundane, insubstantial descriptions into opportunities to inject a healthy dose of ridiculousness.
"Seeing through Luna's eyes through Luna's thoughts through Celestia's head through Celestia's memories" sounds like a delightful experience! I'll have to go into explicit detail regarding how utterly weird that is for Twilight.
I agree that past tense would probably be best, though I may use present tense for the alternate ending to reinforce the notion that it's a counterpart to the episode. Generally, I only use present tense by itself in erotica.
Honestly, I was thrilled about the premise, but I hated putting it into writing and couldn't be happier when I was finally done. That said, hammering it into shape would give me editing experience, which I'm sorely lacking.
So... being a changling is an STD?
2547665
How else would they reproduce, with each other? That's preposterous!
What did I just read? I know I liked it, 8ut I have no idea what that was.
3295100
"Madman are wont to shout at the wind," they said. "It's just something that happens."
What's something that happens now?
3389590
Tragedy tags are such a contentious topic. Have you ever seen a story on this site, or even in this fandom, that follows the traditional definition? I haven't.
That said, I'm still waiting for someone to write Richard Dawkins in Equestria.
3405816
Sorry for the delayed reply. I didn't receive a notification so I only noticed you'd responded when I dropped in here for other reasons.
I have four arguments regarding why the tragedy tag should be used the way I interpret it:
1. Distinguishing between happy and sad endings is one of the most important roles tags can play in allowing a reader to choose a story most appropriate to their current mood and much clearer than things like "Is or isn't this dark?" and "Is or isn't this sad?". If there weren't already the Tragedy tag available to fill that role, there'd be a strong need for another tag to do it.
2. The FiMFiction FAQ agrees with me on everything about the Tragedy tag except the question of what to do with multiple endings, which it leaves unaddressed.
- "Sad" means that, regardless of the type of ending, if the author has succeeded at what they attempted, you'll feel sad at things that happen on the way to the end.
- "Dark" means the story is "dark and/or gritty".
- "Tragedy" means the hero fails and the ending is sad/bittersweet. (I actually argued with Zephyrus Scary over whether For Mother is a tragedy. If a character cuts a Gordian knot by dying and going to their version of heaven, that's not a happy ending. The story was unavoidably a tragedy the moment they were put in said catch 22 situation.)
3. With everyone I've talked to, the "Tragedy" tag is interpreted as a warning rather than an enticement (used more to exclude undesired non-triumphant endings than to inclusively filter for desired ones) so, in the rare cases where a story has more than one ending and not all are tragic, it makes more sense to leave the tragedy tag off.
4. In the case of this story, the tragic ending is clearly (by structure, overall feel, and your author's note) the secondary/alternate ending and it makes the most sense for the presence or absence of the Tragedy tag to refer to a story's primary ending.
As for actual tragedies on this site, the aforementioned For Mother should do well enough to count.
3532540
Pardon my belated response as well; I haven't had internet for the past week or so. If I wanted to continue arguing this point, I'd say that neither ending is really the official one--as the original is only the prequel to a canonical episode--and personally, I prefer the alternate. I might go a step further and speculate that that arrangement is an attempt to skirt the need for the Alternate Universe tag. All in all, though, it's been too long.
3592904
Fair enough. I suppose I can be satisfied with the folder I keep in my recommendations group for things where the Tragedy tag is either misapplied or avoidable by only reading one of multiple endings.
3612784
Naturally!
Man, that was a depressing april fool's chapter.
I don't like the alternate ending as much as the first... I suppose it showed the deaths of everyone, but I'd really like a summary of the events after that and a closing line. It kind of feels like it just stopped in the middle of the scene and there's no fade to black or credits roll, it just stops.
4193628
"As silence fills the hive, the world turns to black."
Don't tell me there's no fade to black.
Kidding. It's abrupt, but it is there. It's also a very concise summary of the events that followed.
There are no words to express how sad the alternate ending of this story is.
No
Words.
On a side note, could I use the basis of this (Namely, Changeling Princesses and census documents lacking birth dates as a plot point in a future story? I promise it won't be a repeat of my Magical Mistakes - Twilight the Changeling story) in a future story of mine? It would be such a plot-twist in the series it will be in! And it WILL have a happy ending, because HAPPY ENDING OR BUST! If not, so much for that. The idea is already forming in my head...
On another note, too bad there isn't an ending that says what happens when the ponies don't overreact to the princesses being Changelings.
4199790
Basically, to put it very bluntly...
All because of their ignorance.
4201278
You needn't ask permission; you're free to do as you will.
4376014
The watershed event that splits the continuity in two is Celestia deciding, for one reason or another, that her ponies aren't ready, so yes, I can see the potential for a continuation. I prefer to end my stories on the implication that the world is bigger than the plot, though. That's probably a reaction to that awful feeling when a good story ends. Is knowing that the characters still have lives to live even though we're not privy to them not more comforting?
Bravo good sir. I don't know how I managed to go this long without finding this gem of a story but that has thankfully been rectified.
This was a great read and I'll most likely come back and reread it later. Even the 'bad ending' was great, I normally don't like grim stories, because it fit. It's something that I could easily see happening.
uuuuhhhhh...
*dislike*
4784223
Yeah, I saw a LOT of great potential in this story, but that really terrible ending ruined it