"We Cured Ponypox In ‘38": Musings From "Zephyr Mountain" · 1:36am Dec 12th, 2023
I never posted an announcement blog, so in case you missed it, I wrote a new fic for Imposing Sovereigns.
It's a story about harmony, friendship, their limits, and the different ways it manifests. It's a story about old mistakes. It's a story about new mistakes. It's a story about managing the dozens upon dozens of problems that come with leadership. It's a story about not giving up too fast. It's a story of the embryo of a new era. It's a story of the last breaths of an old one. It's a standalone. It's a prototype for a multi-chapter story or else a multi-story arc. Twilight Sparkle And The Martyr Of Zephyr Mountain is a lot of things.
This is likely because, not unlike many of my stories, this is a small part of a bigger connected story. Unlike those stories, I'm starting at almost-zero for a future fic that requires a lot of exposition real fast and with a word limit.
I got to share the bare bones of the political situation in the comment section. However, by the time I put it together (and was brave enough to go back into the comments because post-fic depression hit like a truck it ended up being nestled way down in there, so uhhhh have bonus worldbuild.
Much of this was originally alluded to in the first(ish) attempt at this story as I still tried to figure out my point of attack. The result being a slow and mostly needless opening scene that spent most of the time trying to justify its own existence and exposition attempting to cut the comment section ahead of the curve instead of like, actually telling the story. Perhaps this resulted in Martyr being too subtle for its own good at times, but honestly? The premise is what it is. If someone can't grok with it, or doesn't like G5, or the fact that parts of G4 must end for G5 to exist, there's nothing I can do about that. At best, that's what the longer fic is for. At worst, it's a learning experience.
I've never written Twilight Sparkle as a POV before, and it ended up being more of a struggle than I thought. Or to be more exact, I haven't written a lawful good POV and it's more of a struggle than I thought. Silver Spoon and Diamond Tiara and Spoiled Rich and Tirek are all, to some extent, jerks. When it wasn't from the viewpoint of a jerkish character, it was with a mostly-neutral narrator. Someone good, but heavily flawed and not like... capital L Lawful Good. The solution is my favorite writing trick: a character's greatest flaw is their greatest strength inverted.
Twilight is a good pony who believes in friendship. Full stop. On the political stage, this gets... complicated. She's not a chessplayer. She does not engage in subtle subterfuge, backstab, scheme, and presumes the best in ponies, more often than not. In other words, she will not and cannot play the game Cozy Glow wants her to play. She's also wise enough to know when not to engage in a bad faith argument. The verbal traps to lure her into the umpteenth debate about Cozy's imprisonment aren't triggered, nor are the tribal discourse traps. There's a time and a place for these discussions, and this isn't it. Additionally, most ponies in the crowd are ponies who already favor the Primaries' arguments, came to see celebrities fight, or want to see Cozy's fancy villa. It matters less what the crowd believes and more that the crowd is there at all. Twilight has been doing this job long enough to recognize a security blanket when she sees one.
The Primaries and Cozy Glow are angry, but that's an anger born from fear. When Twilight lands, all the Primaries (with the possible exception of Mistral Drift) are terrified of her. Partly because they've been running on the belief that the Alicorns are overpowered and will exhert their strength toward opposition when and how they see fit. Mostly because the reality of the situation just hit like a truck--the talk suddenly isn't just talk anymore, and they know for certain that they're being listened to. Which is kind of scary when you've been talking smack about her on your radio show for the last two years. Cozy herself has taken every step she can to ensure she comes out of this safely. The crowd is there for hype, to be manipulated, to help her look good, and for basic morale, but most of all, the crowd is here to ensure that whatever happens here will be seen. Nobody is going to secretly put her in Tartarus. Nobody is going to attack her. She is going to come out of this alright, and if she doesn't, everyone will know. She's not afraid to die (if anything, she's troublingly okay with the idea) but she'll be damned if it doesn't happen with everypony watching. This has less to do with fear of Twilight herself and more to do with the paranoia born from only having one wing, and the fact that she has more enemies than Twilight these days.
A lot of balls are in the air for this fic, but the basic conflict is this: Cozy came to win. Twilight came to help.
In a way, Cozy Glow is Twilight's Nightmare Moon. A growing tumor she didn't notice until it was too late. A guilty stain on her permanent record. Twilight knows that helping Cozy won't fix Equestria, but it certainly feels that way. She didn't petrify the kid, but Cozy had been her student in the first place. If only she'd solved for X in time, before Tartarus, before the siphon spell had been activated, if only she'd paid more attention and tried harder, maybe they'd have a better world. If not, she still would have helped one more pony. In the last half-century, Cozy Glow has become more symbol than pony, and Twilight is not immune to this as much as she'd like to think otherwise.
Cozy meanwhile has so much going on she needs a longer story to explore it all. I seriously considered writing it from her viewpoint, but that wasn't wise or feasible with 15k words. At least, I don't think so. I'm not sure if anyone else is eager to read that story. I do think that I have to write it though. How much of it will make it into an actual fic depends on if I'm writing pre-Martyr, post-Martyr, or both.
ADDITIONAL NOTES:
- As tradition dictates, I think readers found this a much darker story than I personally think it is. This is probably the result of planning, writing, rewriting, and editing for so long I forgot that it's new for everyone else. Well, that and I personally emphasize the effort more than the result. Equestria as we know it will cease to exist, because of course it will. Everything dies eventually. What matters more, I think, is what we do with the time in between. We know that after this fic, the tribes still split. But we also know that they eventually reunite again. Friendship didn't die. It just went fallow for a while. And sometimes a field needs a fallow season to grow back stronger.
- Gallus is Cozy's heroic foil and I feel so dumb for not seeing it until the final draft. Both orphans. Both Twilight's student. Both cynical. One is the bearer of Magic, while the other is obsessed with magic. One exemplifies the best of Harmony despite being a Griffon, while the other is the posterchild for cute sweet ponies but every bit as vicious and cold as any other foreign species Equestria feared. No wonder they've lived rent-free in each other's brains all this time.
- Speaking of Gallus, the main reason Cozy turns on him is because she's losing. It disrupts the discourse, puts her back in control of the conversation, but most of all, it's her comfort zone. I theorize that when ponies are in crisis or feel especially insecure they lean harder on what they know, and what they're good at. Cozy is good at manipulating emotions and hurting people, and Gallus is right there. However, she forgot she herself isn't immune to emotions and wearing the Talisman, she can't ignore them. The attack ends up with Cozy shooting herself in the foot, which is kind of typical of her. She's good at planning, and good at execution, but she's got temper issues and is a bad loser. Personal headcanon says she falls apart after being found out in "School Raze" because she'd never actually failed before and didn't know how to handle it to the point where she's still fuming about it in "Frenemies".
- Twilight didn't like the idea of using the truth talisman partly because Cozy has a severe magical ailment that gets worse whenever she's stressed. Magic is bolstered by emotion, and stress raises blood pressure. When chaos-based petrification magic runs through your veins, it's best to keep the blood pressure stable.
- Castle the borzoi stratushound is technically a service dog, but nopony calls him that for the sake of Cozy's pride. He is a good boy and one of the few suggestions from the rehab team that actually stuck. Said rehab team runs on two main rules: do not let her get bored, and do NOT let anything happen to that dog.
- Literally everyone else in this story is more upset about the petrification than Cozy herself. She's upset about the way she came back from it, she's upset about losing her wing and Discord being Grogar the whole time, but the petrification itself is whatever. She didn't consciously experience any of it, and while she's not thrilled with being stone, it's not like she wouldn't have done the same thing in Celestia's position. It sucks but like. She gets it.
- The crappy original first rough draft I attempted for this fic opened with Dinky herself, as well as an excerpt from The Student In Stone. I'm glad I cut this for several reasons, however I do mourn losing that book section for a view of where the culture was thirty years before this story. During the writing of that book, Dinky "The Dink" Doo got special permission to explore Tartarus. It's one of the highlights of her career and she had the time of her life down there. (There's an AU somewhere where Cozy and Dink become friends due to being absolute weirdos who think necromancy is cool. Dinky has magic potential like crazy but has no interest in studying it. Cozy studies magic but can't use it. Alas, what could have been.)
- The Mane Six, the Student Six, and five out of six Pillars are all still around. Bearing Equestria's strongest magic extends one's life. Not for any fated reason, but simply because strong magic means you'll stick around longer. It's not a coincidence everyone who's a cool thousand years are also strong magic users. Star Swirl isn't around anymore, but he was already incredibly old when he entered Limbo.
- We see the five main Primaries, but there are three more significant ponies who didn't come to represent for one reason or another. Four, if one counts the Cloudsdale senator who's unofficial but obviously in cahoots.
- Chapter Six of Make Your Mark did not completely obliterate my timeline, though it did finalize it, more or less. We have at least five years before the Unity Crystals are made due to rising conflict between tribes and threats from a mysterious new Alicorn. The Heights breaks off into its own little city soon after that. One thing we know for sure is that the tribes were still friendly and visited each other from the window in the abandoned port. The tribes don't split for (roughly) another fifty after that, but it's less a harsh break than the slow dissolution of friendship from lack of contact, and while the wounds from the Almost War working title didn't kill, they still hurt.
- This fic, along with the greater story around it, are based on three things:
This excellent fanart by bearmation that made me completely lose my mind 
and this tumblr post
and the realization that gosh a rook sure looks a lot like The Tower doesn't it, as illustrated my dear friend Saddlesoap Opera
This is one of those headcanons that completely changes your view of a character and possesses your goopy goblin brain so bad you're thinking about it day and night from July to September and then you have to write fic about it.
As always, thank you, dear readers. Good night, drive safe, drink your water, and I love you. (:
What always gets me is how Twilight gets only a slim fraction of Celestia's time as ruler of a golden age... though it's not like we know much about the particulars of Equestria during the millennium of Sunbutt. Still, after the way G4 ended, it feels so abrupt, especially...
Well, G5 does have a good amount of narrative potential. Just look at Zephyr Mountain. It's just that the base product doesn't feel like it was worth the cost. But that's a different discussion.
In any case, thanks for giving us a peak behind the curtain. Looking forward to seeing where else the concept leads. (And alas for what could have been between Cozy and the Dink. One is a genius, the other's insane. Good luck guessing which is which.)
A very interesting look into the making of an extraordinary story! Cozy Glow's a tremendously interesting villain, just because we know so little of her whys and wherefores, and because she's so unponylike. She offers so many possibilities for worldbuilding and storytelling, as we saw with your story.
Really liked your characterization, and description, of Twilight. She's not playing Cozy's games, for reasons of pragmatism, morality, and basic personality.
Castle is indeed a very (fluffy) good boy, and a nice call-forward to Cloudpuff. The idea of Zephyr Heights' royal family being Cozy's descendants is really growing on me; even the colors of Haven and Pipp are a good fit!
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I think, if you asked Celestia, she would say the Equestrian Golden Age ended when Luna took the mantle of Nightmare Moon, and the next thousand years were just her keeping the lights on (literally!) and the wheels of government turning.
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The carnivalesque Lord of Misrule rules for but one day--it is only fitting that actual poor rulers rule but shortly, and that the quality of a politician's statesmanship can be inferred from the length of their term in office.