Unpublished Files – Part 3 · 1:21am May 22nd, 2013
This unpub is the second endeavor I made when I decided to try an attempt at fanfiction within the MLP universe. My first story (which I might talk about at some point, most likely not) seemed like a good idea, right until the point I finished writing it, then it was promptly shuffle it into the dark abyss of DO NOT USE.
Before we dig into it though, I do have a sort of… request? It’s at the end of this post so you can skip down to the last couple of paragraphs if you’re less interested in the unpub but feel like helping me out.
Anyhow, this blog tonight deals with the unpub story of: The Fluttershy Effect (having little to actually do with Fluttershy).
The idea here (playing on the concept of the butterfly effect, not the movie, which I’ve never seen) was what would the world be like without Rainbow Dash’s sonic rainboom that brought our main cast their cutie marks and ultimately united them. Annnddd already you might start to see the problem. This is not a new, or original idea, as many of you reading this may be thinking, ‘hey, I’ve had that idea!’
But some quick story stuff, and things... The story followed Twilight (hey, surprise!) who manages to avoid being ‘changed’ by the temporal anomaly (wow, I have watched way too much star trek). She finds herself in a dark version of Equestria where Nightmare Moon and Discord run free and unchallenged. The land is ruled over not by Celestia but somepony called the Queen of Shadows.
To make a very long story short (a draft of 30ish chapters and almost 100k words) we meet each main character in their new, contrasting lives until at last we come to the Queen of Shadows who, if you haven’t guessed it, is actually a fallen Twilight. After not being accepted into Celestia’s school, Twilight went off on her own and learned magic from less reputable sources, swearing revenge on the Sun Queen.
There are a lot of reasons this one will never get published, the least of which is, it just wasn’t that enthralling. Alternate worlds always have less at stake because the world itself simply doesn’t mater or affect the characters we care about.
But the biggest reason I killed this one was (surprise) I stumbled across another writer doing a very similar story, which I thought was done much better. And this is actually where the request comes in. For the life of me, I was never able to find the darn thing again and I didn’t commit the name to memory.
It followed Fluttershy as the main character, being head of the weather patrol. She doesn’t have her cutie mark and keeps getting strange visions of other ponies she doesn’t know, who also don’t have their cutie marks. She meets up with Rainbow, who is like delivery worker and Pinkie who is a rock sales pony (and that’s as far along as it was when I lost it to the void).
So, if anyone has happened upon it or knows of such a story it would be great if you could help me find it again.
Was it this one?
World Without Rainbows
That's my favorite au with Rainbow Dash not doing the sonic rainboom. It's very well developed and you can actually believe the world the author created.
1096739
so you posted a link to Eqd which links back to fimfiction
o and i think that one is not the one starwin is looking for^^
Found it! To Make Old Friends.
1096751
Hehe, sorry, I thought the author was still using Google Docs.
See, I was thinking of
(and let me see if I can find it in my something here, so I can edit in a link for you)Never a Rainbow. Then you mentioned Fluttershy working weather patrol and yeah, nope.Weather patrol seems flat-out unlike Fluttershy, period.
1096752
That's it! I spent so much time trying to search it out but was never able to locate it again! Apparently, all I had to do was ask this awesome community. Thank-you-thank-you-thank-you-thank-you!
It sounds like To Make Old Friends . I've had it in my favourites for a while now, what serendipity.
You mean not enough Star Trek.
I know that feeling of discarding a story idea when I find it's been done. I'm amazed sometimes at what I'm beaten to. Once I had an idea for ponies playing DDR. Guess what appeared in the feature box just a couple of days later?
Still, just because it's been done doesn't mean you have to throw the whole thing away. I have that DDR idea incorporated in another story outline now, for instance. Because DDR is too awesome to not write about at some point.