Second Story! Woo! · 2:17am Dec 8th, 2014
Yeah, suffice it to say, I got tired of waiting on my pre-reader, so I posted another story.
"The Sun Also Rises" was inspired directly by the first "Equestria Girls" movie, obviously. I walked away from that film generally satisfied, but I felt like there was far too much contrived coincidence going on. How did Sunset Shimmer know about what was going on in Equestria? Specifically, how did she know that Twilight had access to the Element of Magic, that she'd become a princess, and that the summit was coinciding with the portal opening again? She had to get the information somehow. The second movie suggests she brought some stuff with her from Equestria (the message journal being the one thing we know about for certain), but at the time, we had nothing to suggest it one way or another, and by the time I started on this story, the prequel comic had gotten a proper mass release in the first IDW annual. So I got to thinking, what if there was a second portal?
And things laid themselves out for me; a second mirror, leading to a bridge world where individuals from the human world and the pony world could interact. Why such a thing would exist I didn't decide upon immediately, but in a bit of serendipity, I randomly decided that both portals were the work of Star Swirl the Bearded, and that he found himself with reason to keep in touch with someone on the other side. Make of that what you will.
It also solved another problem; where was Sunset Shimmer living during her time in the human world? The bridge world. It wouldn't provide every comfort of home, but it would provide a place for her to sleep and rest, plus a place to store her belongings other than a school locker. She'd have to leave to deal with other things, and have to find another place to stay when the portal wasn't open, but thankfully, while I was working on this, someone else provided an explanation, one which I tipped my hat towards in the final story.
This piece, specifically. You might recognize the artist. Amusingly enough, it was posted on my birthday.
Another thing that prompted this was something I've always been fascinated by; redemption. You have a character who has deliberately done horrible things, who's come to realize that they've done horrible things, and is trying to pull themselves up from the pit they fell into. Luna went through something similar, but it was said by Word of Faust that her corruption into Nightmare Moon was due to outside forces. Discord? You could easily argue that he was simply acting according to his nature; I've got my own theory about that and his eventual change of heart. Sunset Shimmer, however? She was a pony, and in many ways a counterpoint to Twilight, but one with vastly different circumstances. Twilight had a mother, father and older brother, who clearly raised her with love. Sunset, as suggested in my story and postulated elsewhere, lost her parents and found her way to the family of relatives. I'm not saying those relatives didn't care for her, as that would be a spoiler, but she wasn't close with them.
And based on my own interpretation of Sunset's actions after putting on the crown - her shock and surprise, her apparent attempts at fighting off the magic as it transformed her, her tears - I figured that demonic transformation she went through was an outright shock to her, and that she had full recollection of what she did. Sorta like Trixie post-Alicorn Amulet, only worse; after all, Trixie never tried to directly kill anyone. There has yet to be a villain in MLP:FIM that has (though Nightmare Moon would've caused a lot of indirect deaths and I wouldn't put it past Tirek or Sombra), and there Sunset was, chucking a fireball at Twilight. That remorse, to me, was genuine; "Rainbow Rocks" just reinforced my belief.
So how to get her started on the road to redemption properly? This story. I started on it after the prequel comic hit mass release in October of 2013, and finished it in April of 2014, releasing it on DA scant days before IDW released the first issue of the "Reflections" arc which, amusingly enough, confirmed my suspicions regarding Star Swirl's connection to the mirror portals and lent credence to my theory of there being more than one mirror. "Rainbow Rocks", alas, destroyed all chance of this story being canon, but when has that stopped fanfiction writers?
In any case, I have further plans for Sunset Shimmer, and plan on expanding upon what I've written here about her relatives and her relationships with them. Stuff from "Rainbow Rocks", both canon and my own speculation, will be expanded upon, and I have every expectation of incorporating details from the upcoming holiday annual. Events akin to those from "Rainbow Rocks" will be adapted into a future story, but things won't go exactly the same. And perhaps, one day, she'll receive a destiny that she's come to think is out of her reach. Only time will tell.
