The Queen of Hearts Rough Draft Ideas · 12:51am Sep 4th, 2014
BIG POST IS REALLY, REALLY BIG
So as I promised in the author’s note in the last chapter, here’s my post about rough draft ideas of The Queen of Hearts as well as some other things. I know many of you want to know about what’s coming next, but that won’t be for a while. Until then, why don’t we look back at the story you all love so much and go behind the scenes? Though, if I could change one thing about this story, I wish I could actually draw. Not only would I have added illustrations to the fic to add to the immersion, but I could finally have that picture of humanized Chrysalis with Luna and Celestia at her sides as they lay on the beach naked with Luna saying, “I love grilled cheese sandwiches.” Well at least I paint a nice picture with words.
Now the most obvious question you probably want to ask is how in the world I came up with this amazing story. Well I’ll tell you. When I saw A Canterlot Wedding, I became obsessed with Chrysalis. She is without a doubt my favorite villain and what makes her really stick out is her questionable motivation. Eventually, I suddenly got the urge to write about her since not a lot of good stories involving her were around at the time. Eventually, I came up with a story idea.
Chrysalis and love poison.
I mean why not? Love poison makes ponies madly in love with each other, so why wouldn’t changelings use this? Take two ponies, make them drink it, profit. Originally, the story I wanted to write was a one-shot about Chrysalis using love poison in Ponyville to harvest the food and it ends with everyone falling in love with her and she flees the town. Eventually, that evolved to her disguised as a hostess who runs a Hearts and Hooves Event and slips love poison into the punch with it ending the same way. At some point, I came up with The Queen of Hearts. It’s truly amazing how far one small idea can go.
So now I had Chrysalis run a dating service as a story idea. What next? Well I wanted her to be redeemed in the end, so she had to know one of the Mane 7 to help her in the long run. Cliché, I know, but this story would not work without them. I needed someone to work for her and Pinkie was the obvious choice. Not only would her knowledge of everypony help Chrysalis, but she is the only mare insane enough to put up with Chrysalis’s crap. As for dating, I didn’t want to do all those popular ships because even at this point they were overdone. I wanted some original ones to make mine stand out and they worked out pretty well with my favorite being Photopants.
Later on, I thought Chrysalis should have a chance at love herself, mainly because I didn’t see her shipped all that much (who do people usually pair her with besides Twilight or Celestia?), but who would I give to her? Pinkie? I thought about it, but I was more in favor of Flutterpie. Shining and Cadance? Super tempting, but no. Celestia? I did think about it, but I chose Luna. Luna I thought was a better choice because I wanted to see more of her since the show gives us little of her, her darker past makes it easier for them to relate, she and Chrysalis would have a clean slate, and she’s cuter. The romance was to not only give Chrysalis an even happier ending, but we get to explore much more of her character this way.
But then I thought of something else. What was I going to do with the changelings? I couldn’t have them just disappear until the end. On top of that, we barely know a goddam thing about them or Chrysalis herself until much later. They also needed a very good reason to let go of their almighty leader who could protect them from Celestia’s wrath. Sure, she screwed up hard, but who the hell would run the kingdom if she was gone? Who would represent the changeling race? After much thinking, Nymph was created. I chose her to not only represent the changelings in the story, but to have someone with a lot of personal experience with Chrysalis so we could learn more of our star. My very first big OC and she turned out pretty well (at least I hope she did).
Writing her was very hard, however. I chose Nymph to be a good, kind queen, but I worried she would be too stale and we already have Celestia (I’m not calling her stale, I mean as in we don’t need two characters who are practically identical), so I gave her moments of rage in the changeling chapters to show she isn’t as sweet as people thought and make Chrysalis the actual superior queen. There was also the crown, which I heavily debated on for a long time as to whether or not Chrysalis is right about her. I felt it was a good choice to have her be a cowardly backstabber since it gave her a lot more character. As for her name, I chose Nymph as a subtle thing with her and Locera’s names.
Youngest to Oldest
Nymph -> Chrysalis -> Locera
Infant -> Cocoon -> Butterfly
Did I just blow your mind?
The name Nymph was also a great choice for another reason. You saw how she acts and her hobbies. Her personally is somewhat based off the word “nymphomaniac.” Did I blow your mind again? We’ll be seeing a lot more of her in the sequel and sorry, Nymph, but you’re not getting Shining Armor. At least you have your changeling concubines.
Rough Draft Ideas
I had a huge outline made before I started writing and long before I posted the first chapter, I had a lot of the chapters written out to some extent, which were basically my rough draft ideas. To my surprise, this story changed more than a changeling during the course of writing it and I think it helped to have chapters written long before to know when changes needed to be made. Here’s a list of all the rough draft ideas that I can remember.
The first two chapters remain unchanged from the original draft, so we’ll skip those.
A Special Visitor
If you read one of my author’s notes, you would know this was originally supposed to be the fourth chapter (I’ll explain the original third later). The final version is about the same as the rough draft with the exception of the scene of Chrysalis and Luna alone together in the bedroom. I felt like they did not have nearly enough interaction for Luna to care about her enough to hang out with her on Nightmare Night so I wrote it in. They certainly had cute chemistry.
A Canterlot Couple
Pretty much the same. I demand people write more Photopants.
Dating Damsels in Distress for Dragon Dummies
Now this was an extremely tough one to write. Originally, when Spike yells at Chrysalis about hurting Rarity, their friends overhear them and realize the break up was part of a plan, making them very angry with them both and Rarity shoots down Spike hard. Pinkie remains by Chrysalis’s side when she gets the full story and begs her to fix it, but Chrysalis says the damage had been done and Spike and Rarity will never be together. However, she intends to salvage the damage and find each of them a lover to make the most out of the situation.
And then there was a scene I was really sad I had to cut out. Chrysalis visits Spike in the library as he cries in his basket and tells him to move on. She even mocks him about his love for Rarity and (because she knows so little about him) asks what his mother would think if he dated a pony. Spike tells her that he never knew his parents and explains his origins, actually making Chrysalis feel sad. Seeing Spike as an outcast like her, she gently holds him and tell him that she would fix everything. She also tells him if he told anyone about her display of affection, she’d snap him neck.
Unfortunately, figuring out how Spike has everyone forgive him as well as make the romance happen was too difficult, so it was made into what we got now.
As for the jelly, as I made outlines for this entire fic as well as wrote out some chapters, my pre-reader thought it would awesome to have gross bug humor. I agreed and shortly after…well, you know what I came up with.
Looking back, I kind of wish I had a scene with Chrysalis teaching Spike how to win over Rarity similar to this. Everything goes great until they learn Pinkie has done nothing but teleport marshmallows ever since Chrysalis went to Canterlot.
Sweet Candy and Bitter Memories
I think this is my favorite chapter. I love Halloween, the costumes were fun to make, scaring Chrysalis was awesome, it was shorter so easier to work on, and this was when the close relation between Chrysalis and Luna began. It remains about the same compared to the original draft except the scene between Luna and Chrysalis is extended, adding Luna crying and Chrysalis comforting her. I love writing feels.
The Greatest Discovery Ever
Pinkie at her best, in my opinion. It was difficult to think about how Pinkie would win Fluttershy over. Originally they would hang out with Chrysalis tagging along at first, but I couldn’t think of anything else. Well, one idea was as Pinkie and Fluttershy talked at Fluttershy’s home, they hear Chrysalis scream. They rush over and find her trying to murder a frog with rocks and magic, calling it the most disgusting and horrifying creature on the planet. I eventually changed it to what is now, but there was no Luna, so I fixed that at the last minute.
A Change of Opinion
Probably one of the best chapters in the entire story if not the best. It was so much fun to do so much world building and I’m still proud of the name Bugartha. Believe or not, this and the next chapter were not in the original outline. I sort of suddenly got an idea for these chapters because I realized a real problem a few months before I made it. Nymph and the changelings almost never appear in the whole story and we only heard about them from other characters, so I wrote this to remedy that.
By the way, how many fics actually have a kingdom rather than a hive? We don’t get a lot of them (probably because the comics sort of killed a lot of potential with the changelings).
The Queen and Twi (And Her Friends)
Ugh. Ugh. UGH. If you read this around the time this came out, you would understand why I’m not too thrilled to talk about this chapter. It looks fine now, but the original version was…bad. Real bad. For realz. Actually, it was so bad that I wrote a whole section on it.
Lessons in Love and Pain
Flim and Flam are strangely extremely fun to write, probably because I love old timey shit. Anyway, there was an ongoing joke in this chapter that was (thankfully) removed, but we’ll talk about that later.
Mare vs. Machine
One of the absolute hardest chapters I ever had to write. Making the magic happen between Flam and Hoity put me at my limits but somehow, by some miracle, I came up with the idea of a robot uprising and it was glorious. The chapter remains the same except for one thing. Not sure why I took it out, but when Chrysalis and Pinkie sleep in the hotel, Chrysalis has a dream.
She is in the Canterlot throne room using Celestia as a seat, has Cadance give her back rubs, drinks love from Shining Armor’s horn like a straw, uses Twilight as a footrest, has Luna massage her hooves, and Nymph is forced to play the harp for her. As Chrysalis brags about her success, Pinkie comes in with a platter of food and lid over it. She presents it to Chrysalis and reveals the ultimate treat: Cotton candy. Chrysalis immediately begins devouring it but is awakened by Pinkie screaming that she’s being eaten by a zombie. She realizes she’s been eating Pinkie’s mane (because it smells like cotton candy) and kicks her off the bed.
Identity Crisis
The longest chapter in the whole story and one of my favorites. People complain that it went on way too long with Chrysalis and Pinkie but I felt it was needed. Chrysalis is a major villain and I wanted her to go out like a major villain. While we did have all the buildup of her depression and second thoughts of hurting those she cared about, I felt like we needed more for her to finally throw in the towel. She’s not going to give up her revenge and the chance to be queen again just because she feels lonely. She needed Pinkie to hammer it into her skull that she lost and it was awesome to see Pinkie kick ass.
Luna originally does not visit Chrysalis but rather receives a letter, saying she apologizes for cutting her off and wants to see her again. Happy, Luna goes and tells Celestia and they talk about her for a bit. Since I wanted Chrysaluna to be successful, I wanted to the two of them together for a very emotional moment, so it was changed. It was weird to have Chrysalis cry since she’s a tough girl, but I think the moment worked out perfectly.
The Fruit Festival
What Fruit Festival!?
This is dead chapter #1. It’s one day before winter and farmers around Equestria gather in Ponyville to sell various fruits. Chrysalis hangs out with Pinkie and Fluttershutter and they find Applejack with her family, including Braeburn. As Fluttershy and AJ have a light argument about paying for the pie she’s giving her friends, Cherry Jubilee appears and talks with AJ. When she leaves, they realize Braeburn is staring and urge to him to go after her because he has the hots for her. He does, they hit it off pretty well, but then argue about whether they should be cherry or apple ranchers, causing them to split. AJ, feeling bad for her cousin, hires Chrysalis and Pinkie to fix this mess.
When Chrysalis visits Cherry, she tries some cherries and after agreeing to help her and Cherry leaves, Chrysalis shoves her face into a barrel of cherries and devours them like mad. A mare comes up to buy some but Chrysalis reveals her red stained face and tells her to get her own, causing the pony to scream and run. Chrysalis would actually start wearing cherry scented perfume from this point on, so I am a little sad this chapter didn’t make it. The chapter was ultimately removed for two reasons. The first was I could not think of how to resolve the conflict. The second was it ultimately didn’t add anything to the main plot, so I felt it wasn’t needed. Such a shame.
Oh yeah, and at the end of the chapter, Braeburn walks off with Cherry and her friend Chickadee to learn what cherry popping is. Lucky guy.
By the way, Cherry Jubilee needs more love. Would you believe she didn’t have a tag on fimfiction even months after the episode aired? That’s sad.
Feeling Blue
Originally had no scenes between Chrysalis and Luna until the end. Ouch. The scene of them eating takeout together was inspired by my craving for Panda Express at the time. Ain’t that something?
Closer than Most
Also not originally in the main outline and I wrote this after posting Identity Crisis because Luna needed more screen time with her waifu. Everything’s the same as the rough draft with two exceptions. During her conversation with Nymph, the queen teases her for not having a date for the upcoming Hearts and Hooves event as well as not getting any action in a long time and Luna argues that Nymph is the same until she turns the crystal ball around, showing a sleeping changeling in her bed.
Nymph tells her that he is a new recruit and thought he was too cute to pass up and wakes him up to introduce him to Luna. He is immediately enthralled with the alicorn, compliments her a lot, and wishes to be her personal guard in the future, causing Luna to snicker at Nymph’s dismay. Fed up with not being the most desired female, Nymph promotes him to air patrol by throwing him out the window.
The second change was a scene that was supposed to be after Luna’s Wild Ride. They go to Carousel Boutique to have dinner with Spike and Rarity and they joke around a bit. Spike mentions that the children of the elementary school are having a boys vs girls thing going on and he stayed out because he was dumb. Everyone agrees, saying girls are better, especially since all the alicorns and royal changelings are female.
Spike suddenly blurts out that there is in fact a male alicorn after Celestia goes to the restroom because he is sick of them ripping on his gender and they know he’s lying, so they pressure him with questions about this alicorn. He comes up with the name Al Acorn, the mighty tree-bearded alicorn who rules over plants like acorn trees and animals like squirrels. They laugh at him.
Role Reversal
The only difference is the ending. Originally, Chrysalis hides when Nymph appears and overhears everything. When Nymph’s guards arrive and she leaves in her carriage, she discovers a note wedged between the cushions from Chrysalis that says she is safe and she is sorry. No crystal ball call was planned in the next chapter with this version.
Red Hearts, Blue Moon
Yes, I did get a raging boner from writing a scene about two horses making out in a bath.
I’m surprised no one noticed that Cadance actually initiated the romance between Chrysalis and Luna. Chrysalis had no romantic feelings for her until Cadance brought it up and pushed it a little. She was certainly in for a big surprise on Hearts and Hooves Day.
Anyway, the crystal ball call was added when previous chapter was changed. Also, during Shining Armor’s and Cadance’s ride home, his loss of the bet meant he had to eat her out on the ride home, but I felt that was seriously pushing the rating.
Chrysalis’s Concoction of Catastrophe
The original third chapter. Yeah, that’s right. I loved writing this one and thought it was one of my best works, but my pre-reader pointed out a problem. It was way too early to pull out the big guns, so I decided to move it to way later. Chrysalis poisons Turner to have Zecora play doctor with him, only Twilight appears out of the Mane 7, no princesses, and because I began writing it before Keep Calm and Flutter On aired, no Discord! What a horrible fate we avoided.
There’s also a deleted scene with Chrysalis and Luna. The night before they go to Zecora for the cure, they stay at one of the unused patient rooms to keep an eye on Turner. To help Chrysalis take her mind off things, Luna gets dirty and gives a physical by rubbing her hooves all over her body. When she finishes, she asks Chrysalis what to do next and she tells her to take her temperature. Luna laughs and says it isn’t dirty and Chrysalis tells her to use a rectal thermometer, making them both laugh before they go to sleep. The scene was removed because it felt like the entire point of it was for that one joke.
Date of Deceit
Luna almost has Chrysalis have sex with her on the way home, but Chrysalis turns her down since she doesn’t know her true identity. The end scene when Chrysalis comes back to Cupid’s Arrow was much calmer, but still rather sad.
This chapter also had the greatest typo ever with “first date” written as “fist date.” Maybe one day, guys. Maybe one day.
CMC chapter
Dead chapter #2
Chrysalis gets a request from Rarity and Applejack to help the CMC find dates for next week. She and Pinkie find three potential candidates (the colts they were with during Hearts and Hooves) but they have problems at first. One of those problems is that Pip is in love with Luna and doesn’t believe she and Chrysalis are dating. Chrysalis unfortunately has to bring Luna in to break the bad news. Poor kid.
Scrapped due to I could not think of content and the story doesn’t need this chapter at all, especially since the love poison was ultimately removed.
Yep, you read that right. The CMC accidently mention the potion while thanking Chrysalis for finding them dates and she grills them about it. She makes some as a bargaining chip for her people and keeps it stored away.
The Nymph Chapter
Dead Chapter #3
I began on this one late in as it was not originally planned until about right after Date of Deceit. Nymph tries to figure out of what to do with the peace talk hiatus because the ponies are too scared to meet again since Chrysalis appeared and has a stressful time. Blueblood and several guards are staying with her in the palace to ensure Chrysalis doesn’t attack and they don’t get along well. Nymph has a meeting with the council and when she leaves, she realizes she left her crown and returns, but overhears something. The newest member (who replaced Bumble) talks about the changelings becoming extremely restless with the hiatus and are becoming upset with Nymph for letting Chrysalis go. He calls her completely incompetent and says out loud he wishes Chrysalis died from the invasion so they wouldn’t have this problem. Nymph goes berserk and attacks him by slamming him against the wall several times as the other four members pull her back. Realizing what she has done, she runs to her room to hide in her bed.
Hornet comes in shortly after and tells her that they managed to force the assaulted changeling to keep his mouth shut, but warns her that she’s losing it. Nymph sulks in her room for a while before leaving the palace to meet Bumble for advice of how to end the hiatus or at least find Chrysalis before she screws everything up or is killed. He tells her she could make her appear by threatening what she wants most and she gets an idea. Bumble says goodbye to who he believes is Celestia and she goes to Blueblood and tells her that she has an idea to lure out Chrysalis that will only require their charming selves.
It was a shame I scrapped this one. I wanted to develop Nymph’s character more. The chapter was supposed to sort of show her guilty conscious as she slowly goes mad worrying about Chrysalis’s safety without really explaining why. Since you read the whole story, you know it’s because she stole the crown, so she believes everything that has happened to her sister is her own fault (sort of, but not really) and if she was killed during a plot for revenge, she would feel like she is to blame. It was turned down because I felt the story would be fine without out, I had difficulty writing content of the chapter, and I didn’t want to keep people waiting since we had that ending with Chrysalis smashing a mirror and I had barely started This Day Will be Perfect: Take Two.
The Ending
Fuck me this is where it gets bad.
So as I mentioned a long time ago, the ending to The Queen of Hearts had been changed. A lot. I shutter when I think about the original because it is doo-doo garbage compared to the final version, mainly because I had it kept like this for almost a year before finally making changes. Ready? This is going to be a long read, so let’s go.
So everything’s the same up until Nymph does her speech at Hearts and Hooves event and when she finishes, Chrysalis flips the fuck out and leaves. In order to calm the people down, Pinkie makes a large bowl of punch to serve everyone, accidently using the love poison to make it. Eventually, large groups of ponies start falling in love and the slime is revealed, resulting in pure chaos similar to the final draft.
The next day/chapter, Chrysalis sulks in her bed until Luna appears. However, Chrysalis is pissed at her for changing her vote, meaning that with the changelings having all the love they need, they won’t need hers and they won’t take her back, so Chrysalis breaks up with her and tells Luna she never loved her while bad mouthing her, causing the princess to cry and run away. Pinkie visits later, but Chrysalis basically tells her to fuck off and they aren’t friends anymore because even without the vote change, she mixed in the love poison, destroying her reputation. Desperate, Pinkie remembers that she promised not to tell any pony who she is, so she goes tells Nymph. When they return to Cupid’s Arrow, they find Cadance waiting outside since she wants to understand what’s going on. They step inside and tell her the truth, causing her to freak out.
Pinkie stays downstairs to keep Cadance calm and Nymph visits Chrysalis in her bedroom, where they exchange heated words and have a brawl until Pinkie breaks it up. Chrysalis chases Pinkie off and tells Nymph to leave and never return. Before the queen leaves the room, she tells her that she had friends and a lover and to figure out whose fault it is she has none of those now. Chrysalis sulks in the bed some more as her words echo in her head and eventually realizes her mistake and cries. Cadance comes in to comforts her and Chrysalis is confused by her kindness. Cadance tells her that Pinkie told her everything and seeing her cry like this made her realize there’s more to her than she believed. They reconcile and Chrysalis finds Nymph and Pinkie in her office. She breaks down, apologizes, all is forgiven. They realize they need to talk to Luna and Cadance agrees to help if she tells her friends the truth.
They go to the library where everyone else is and learn that they just missed Luna, who went to Canterlot. Celestia, furious with Chrysalis, demands an answer from her, so she reveals herself. Everyone freaks out but Celestia calms them and orders them to explain everything. Afterward, Celestia has a private word with Pinkie, Nymph, and Cadance while everyone else watches Chrysalis. Chrysalis exchanges a few words with them and everyone is divided on what they think about her. Celestia returns and informs them that she has decided not to punish Chrysalis since she believes she has changed and thinks she’s gone through enough hell. However, in return she must tell Luna the truth and apologize.
Celestia takes them all to the palace and has it locked down since she knows word could get out about Chrysalis. Chrysalis goes to Luna’s door as Cherub and apologizes, but Luna demands the truth. Chrysalis reveals herself and Luna blasts her against the wall, but Celestia stops her before she can beat the shit out of Chrysalis. Upset with Celestia for showing mercy, Luna yells at Chrysalis some more before locking herself in her room to cry some more. Celestia consuls Chrysalis as they reunite with the others and says they should have Nymph and Chrysalis perform a mind wipe spell on everyone else in the palace to keep her identity a secret. However, Pinkie wants to help Chrysalis first and convinces everyone else to help. They even do that thing where they stack their hands on top of each other in a huge circle.
A little unsure on the details since I never finished plotting out this next chapter, but they try to have Luna give her another chance, she constantly refuses, but later she and Chrysalis have an emotional moment and all is forgiven. However, she and Nymph have to erase everyone’s memories of her presence, so Celestia rounds up every pony in the palace into one room and locks the door. Chrysalis has some fun by revealing herself and scares the living daylights out of them by telling them she will devour them unless they give her a sacrifice, so they offer up Blueblood. Unamused by her joke, Nymph uses the spell.
So we see the radio interview and then we’re at Bugartha, pretty much the same except the Mane 7, Celestia, Cadance and Shining Armor are there. The changelings aren’t coming to Equestria just yet, so they go home by themselves, they land in Ponyville and before they go their separate ways, Luna asks Chrysalis if she could stay with her at Cupid’s Arrow for the night. They go there, flirt, and then Luna shows her a necklace made from a crystal that carries love in shape of a heart. It’s enchanted so that the love inside cannot be removed and she wants Chrysalis to fill it with the best kind of love: hot and passionate.
They go into the bedroom and Luna enters the bathroom for a short moment and returns wearing scarlet red lingerie. She gets on top of Chrysalis, they make out, and you know what happens next.
And then
They
FUCK
Let’s list some problems with this ending.
-Chrysalis’s personality does a 360 in a short amount of time.
-This 360 completely undermines all of her character development in the entire story.
-She breaks up with Luna and wants her back about an hour later.
-Cadance is way too forgiving on her.
-There is no crown theft, making the resolution between the sisters much more dull than what we got.
-Everyone is trying to get Luna back with Chrysalis when she has every right to be pissed at her.
-Sappy as fuck.
-Emotions are forced.
-Characters do not have the correct emotions at certain moments.
-Luna is also way too fucking forgiving.
-Not enough rage.
-Need more rage.
-Lots of buildup, poor payoff.
-We do not seeing the changelings come to Equestria.
-No Prince Handsome.
-No real plan on how to have Chrysalis re-enter society as herself.
-They just have Chrysalis show up as herself in the palace.
-Cliché and then they fucked ending.
I’m sure there are a lot more problems, but I think I listed enough.
Eventually I realized a lot of these problems and rewrote it. First I removed the chapter of everyone trying to have Luna forgive Chrysalis by having Chrysie enter Luna’s bedroom and they have an emotional talk on her bed about everything in the same chapter. Similar resolution, so too sappy and Chrysalis is forgiven way too fucking easily.
Then I changed the Hearts and Hooves event to where Chrysalis runs to Fluttershy’s like in the current version. However, when Nymph reveals that she snagged the crown, Chrysalis punches her in the face, reveals herself, and they fight. At this point I stuck with the crown theft because I thought if I didn’t include it, not only would it make Nymph less interesting, but it means Chrysalis acted like a huge bitch for absolutely no reason, so it would be harder for her to be sympathetic. Anyway, Pinkie breaks it up, Nymph storms off with Pinkie following, and Chrysalis remains behind to sulk. Chrysalis actually remembers to put on a disguise and Luna finds her. They talk and then Chrysalis tells her the truth, but Luna reacts way too calmly for my taste. Pinkie and Nymph have an emotional talk that is overheard by Celestia and the rest, Luna stays with Chrysalis, the others confront her, all is good, slime is revealed, same epilogue like above, yada yada yada.
I was in the right direction for what I wanted, but then I realized what was wrong with every version I had made so far. Along with Chrysalis being forgiven not feeling realistic enough, it was not climatic enough. We had so much goddam build for the big reveal and I wanted this story to go out with a bang, so I turned my attention to sweet little Luna.
And produced the rampage you all saw.
However, I did make one last change before I posted it. Chrysalis and Nymph still fight and Chrysalis wins, but she feels like shit afterward after Nymph cries about why she can’t just win for once instead of living in Chrysalis’s shadow and carries Nymph inside, where Angel and the animals fix them up. They talk and it pretty much goes the same way for the rest of the story. I clung to the siblings fighting for a very long time and it was strange to let it go. Why did I do so in the end? I originally wanted the fight to show how much tension there was between the two and then have sweet moment afterward. Instead, I thought it would be better if Chrysalis actually fought back her emotions and forgave someone who wronged her. Not only does it show how far she has come as a character, but this is a story about forgiveness and she’s trying to obtain it, so why wouldn’t she show some in return?
As for the final chapter, the reason it took so long is because I rewrote it quite a lot after posting No More Secrets. I was not satisfied with what I had and suffered serious writer’s block. I’m happy with how it turned out though. I won’t list the changes because there are way too many made in the span of about two months.
The Greatest Mistake I Ever Made
I absolutely do not feel proud for what I did and I just want it dead and buried, but I need to talk about this because it’s importance. You see, The Queen and Twi is about the same as the original with one exception. When Nymph and Twilight are the garden together, Nymph accidently slips out that she had something planned for Celestia if she wasn’t interested in making peace. Long story short, Nymph tells her she planned to drain Luna and Celestia of their magic to ensure no one would threaten her kingdom in order to create peace among her people. Yeah. It was way worse than it sounds. I turned Nymph from a queen trying to clean up someone else’s mess to an ultimate paragon of peace and ultimate power or something to that degree. And to my surprise, I got tons of flak for it. (Can you believe my pre-reader didn’t check this chapter?)
Now I’m sure you’re wondering how I ended up writing this crap. One of my biggest struggles in writing this story was writing Nymph, especially since I have never done an OC with big screen time. I didn’t want her to be just the sweet and good sister and I didn’t want her to look like a push over, so I added this scene at the last minute. I mean I thought it made sense she’d have something planned like this if Celestia wanted to attack the changelings, but it heavily backfired on me and I removed it later on.
But there’s something that needs to be said about this horrible, awful mistake.
I am so fucking happy I made it.
You see, I love getting praise. A lot (I suffer from pride). The more praise I got for this fic, the more I shoved my head up my ass. I actually started to somewhat disregard some quality out of laziness and I wanted to have the chapters out in a timely manner. And then something made things a whole lot worse. I released A Change of Opinion and everyone loved the ever loving hell out of it, resulting with me going up my own asshole on top of my high horse. I felt like a writing god and felt that whatever I wrote people would love, so obviously I overlooked how stupid it was too make Nymph super Jesus or something.
And then the flak happened and I fell back to Earth, leaving a giant crater. I was stunned to have so much complaints and it was very difficult to read them. I couldn’t believe that happened and I took a break from writing for a while to reflect. Eventually, I got back to the computer with an axe and made some heavy adjustments on the later chapters. From this point onward, I took writing extremely seriously. Believe me when I say a lot of the stuff in later chapters was changed all because of this one incident.
When Chrysalis tells Flim and Flam about how she seeks a mate, originally she accidently exposes her snatch as she poses sexually on the couch and freaks when she realizes they and Pinkie saw it. They crack jokes about it and she chases them out with a bombardment of magic. She appears later as Pinkie and Flam hide outside the restaurant with a dress and threatens them to never speak of it again. After the date, they each crack a pun about the incident and Chrysalis storms off with Pinkie catching up and apologizing. I felt the jokes about her vagina was way too childish and threw it out for a more serious approach.
The scene with Luna visiting in Identity Crisis was also inspired from this mistake. I realized that she and Luna did have that much screen time and the romance was going to begin soon, so I needed more. Feeling Blue? Added scenes with Chrysalis and Luna to further construct their relationship. Closer than Most? Inspired after critical thinking on the Chrysaluna status. Chrysalis’s and Nymph’s scene together in Role Reversal? The removal of the rectal thermometer joke? Chrysalis’s meltdown in Date of Deceit? All of the massive rewrites of the final chapters?
All of these things were inspired by me becoming a serious writer after doing this one dumb thing I did. If I did what a lot of authors do and brushed it off/deleted the comments, this story would be nowhere as good as it is now. My advice to all your authors? When people rip you apart like they did with me, you best embrace it and build upon it. You saw how far it got me. It sucks to see people give negative feedback and to admit you fucked up, but it makes everything better.
Of course, you also need to realize when criticism is worth listening to or not.
I got this review when I released the first chapter and I was not pleased to see someone write a whole blog on why my chapter was bad. However, upon reading it, I realized it wasn’t even worth reading. Sure, there were some good points, but it mostly derailed to talk about random things and he even posted a NSFW pic, which was later removed. He even knew it would have to be removed and laughed about it but did it anyway because…who the fuck knows.
However, there’s something about this dumb review that caught my attention and completely confused me for a long time, which is probably why I remember it even now.
It was almost at the end of the fic, when it bends canon just that little bit to allow Soarin to fulfill every chan ever's dream on a daily basis, thrice, and at the same time reuses elements that weren't funny even when they occured in the show itself, that I realised something. Exactly why I'm having a hard time hating on this fic. It reminds me of SatN. In fact, it's not like SatN for me, it is SatN!
Again, there's the language and that it's obviously trying to be SatN and fuck does that joint hurt and I really need to clop to reach a better mind again, but it's all balanced by the fic being actually kind of fucking awesome at other places. No, don't let that get to your head, newbie author!
I never even heard of this fic and this guy claimed I was ripping him off without any explanation. Hmm. A story about Chrysalis running a dating service and some other story about an OC assassin that falls in love with Twilight and talks to a computer or something (I took a glance at it a while back and I think that's what it is about). They could be twins for all I know.
All in all, the review had some good points with grammar and punctuation, but he seemed to have a lot of bias and complained about fucking everything. All because it got featured and it felt like it ripped off his precious baby. I call it his baby because the fic mentioned is what appears to be his best story. Which he completed last year. And still writes blogs mentioning it. By the way, did I mention The Queen of Hearts, the story he called one of the worst stories of all time with one of the most retarded concepts, did way better all of his 41 stories?
You can read the review right here to see for yourself, but please do not harass the author. Just look, don't touch or speak. The point of this is that it’s very important to realize when people are talking out of their asses when criticizing your fic, but try to remember that even they can have at least one good point.
Alright. That’s it for this titan of a post. I know you want info on the sequel, but I need to obtain my next fic from my old computer first. Which is in another state. Stay tuned!
One last thing. What was your favorite moment in The Queen of Hearts?
I loved the nightmare knight part.
Identity Crisis and No More Secrets were my favorite chapters. THE FEELS.
Nymph admitting she finds Shining Armor attractive and wanted him... Best read over I have funny too when she explains the embarrassing moment after the explanation.
But now... No more SA/Cadence/Nymph threesome romance?!
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It's tempting, I won't lie, but as the Princess of Love, I think Cadance takes marriage very seriously and I want her to stay in character. Don't worry, Nymph may not get the prince, but that won't stop her from all the intense flirting.
Hard to say. On the flip side, it's nice seeing a picture of Cherub. =3
Granted, I came into that story fully expecting ChrissyPie. Wasn't entirely happy when I got blindsided by ChrissyPuna but I stuck with it. No regrets.
2427465 but a spin off, au story of the three is still an option.
Oh my stars! Who did that picture of Cherub? I love, love, love it!
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Picture was done by TheRainbow-Alpaca.
Thanks, 2562655!