A Chance Encounter Chapter 5 follow-up · 7:50am Dec 27th, 2014
Well, it's over. Two years ago, I promised to finish this, and two computers, two addresses, and millions of vanilla Cokes later, I did it. Sorry it took so long. There are a couple of reasons:
A) This was a story started by another author, and I always hate picking those up. It fills me with a sense of dread continuing where someone (particularly another fan) left off, as if I was ruining their perfect work with my accursed presence. The planned synopsis I got for the story was pretty much discarded or ran through after Chapter Four, so I had to come up with a completely new ending for the fifth. (Or rather, I had the ending in mind and discussed it with several other Lunaverse authors beforehand, and then had to figure out how to get to it.)
B) One of the reasons I took this story up was because it gave me a chance to...cleanse myself of feelings towards L!Twilight. If you want a nice breakdown of my seething rage, check out my old review of "Boast Busted." There were two issues: first, I couldn't fix Twilight, as RDD was handling her redemption and I couldn't step on his toes. Second, when the story fell behind because of real life and computer woes, RDD had to go and create the overall lackluster "Crisis on Two Equestrias," which marked L!Twilight's turn from antagonist to secondary character and rendered everything I had planned redundant.
C) ZEEEECOOOORAAAAA!!! I regret ever attempting to write for her, ever. Rhyming is not my thing, and having to translate what I want her to say into a rhyme is nearly impossible. God help you if you actually care enough to keep her to the same rhythm she has in the show; I know I certainly didn't care anymore by the end. All I wanted to do was have her beat up Twilight and betray her oldest friend in the series. Is that so wrong?
Something that I did add on to Zecora's character was her extreme reaction to ponies insulting her culture's religion. It's been established that zebras are sun-worshipers, which is something that common L!ponies find abhorrent. In "Helping Hands," Lyra was horrified at the idea of praising the sun until Trixie pointed out that it didn't mean they worshiped Corona. And Zecora was Corona's minion, so she's also a sun-worshiper. She has greater goals than Corona taking over Equestria, mind, but she's also not a big fan of L!Equestria as a whole. Excusing the fact that they banished the pony in charge of moving the sun (albeit after she went crazy because Luna is better being a ruler is hard), they've also all but outlawed anything gold, have a cultural taboo towards being exposed to sunlight during noon, and treat the big ball of flaming gas as if it were the actual devil.
This was a leftover parcel from my plan for the minotaurs, where they hailed from a small island, were deeply involved in commerce, and tended to view life as a competition they could only win by being the greatest at their chosen field and doing a hundred sit-reps every six hours. Oh, and they're sun-worshipers, too. The framework for the story that will never be is that a movement of minotaurs is demanding that the government side with Corona...because a noblepony was an hour late to an important negotiation with one of the most powerful minotaurs out there because they wanted to avoid the noon sun, thereby insulting the minotaur's faith and ruining his schedule, which ended up costing the entire nation hundreds of millions. In addition, there's the whole thing about ponies not using gold; since most other races still use it, the minotaurs have nothing but trouble dealing with exchange rates between gold and silver whenever they do business with Equestria, to the point where valuable deals and alliances are lost because they just don't have the time to work out the proper ratios and the freaking ponies won't take any gold.
Most of that is now meaningless as a different direction was taken for the minotaurs (a better one, mind), but Zecora still fit the mold. In her eyes, the ponies of Equestria are insulting her and her race every time they treat the sun as Hell. She's still cautious enough to check her tongue, but after a day of dealing with Twilight, having the exasperating know-it-all casually insult her would be too much for anyone. I have no idea if this will stick (the wonders of a shared universe), but it's my interpretation, at any rate.
And then there's Spike. I can't discuss what happens to him without giving away some major spoilers (besides, RDD is handling that story), but I will say that the two joining up was never in the cards for this story. I had considred having Twilight go with Spike until he reached the resting spot for the migration, but that just felt superfluous. I couldn't have the little guy run off alone, either. So a dragon comes out of the sky, picks him up, and carries him off to meet his destiny. And Twilight is forever alone, as it should be.
There was one other scene that was cut, mostly because it would have involved more Zecora and I was not up to that anymore. Corona would have seen Spike leaving with the Great Dragon Migration, and while she's peeved that Zecora failed, she sees this as an opportunity to get all of the dragons in Equestria on her side. Zecora, meanwhile, would have had a bit of redemption thrown in as she contemplates her friend's departure, and wishes him good luck. One of the things that has stuck around is that Zecora has another, more noble goal in mind in helping Corona, but she can't reveal what it is without setting off her boss or possibly giving the heroes a lead. If that means entrapping her friend, so be it.
I don't know if I'll write any more Lunaverse after finishing "Eye of the Hurricane," but I will say that if I kept writing, I'd want Zecora to be someone who's basically good, but is so devoted to her end goal that she's willing to do terrible things to accomplish it. She would have her realization moment near the end of Season Two, just in time for Corona's time to end and the third season (which will never happen) to begin.
In any case, I've finished this twisted tale. See you next time.
For whatever it's worth, this is pretty much exactly what I would want too. So you can count on my support in that, if nothing else.
Heck, when everything is over with, I'd even like it if sometime post S2, Spike and Zecora could reconcile and renew their friendship, even if never again being traveling companions. Much as it's good for Spike to get away from Corona, breaking him and 'Z' up was always the one thing I didn't much like about this story -- aft all, Friendship is Magic.
Zecora is hard to write for, and I've never tried to keep her to the meter she uses in the show, at least not consciously.
For what it's worth, this story was worth the wait.
That's how I try to write her. Note that when I did her "Lunaverse in D&D" writeup, I made her alignment True Neutral, not any kind of evil.
Ooh, speaking of which, 5th Edition PHB finally came in today. Yay!
This means that the real end of Zecora's arc finds her living in the woods someplace pretending to be a voodoo priestess.....just like in the Mane Six's world.