William Tell Overture!

We are heading full tilt towards the conclusion of the story so I think the musical analogy is appropriate.

This week's title comes courtesy of King John.

For the last act of the story I'd like to talk about the what ifs of my what if story.

For this chapter. Twilight Sparkle was very close to being a villain in the story. I seriously weighed the fact that Twilight has been living on the border of the socio-economic class of ponies who are behind the uprising and that Shady, her friend, was in that group. Plus I'd given her plenty of reason to be angry at the system by not just being rejected, but being rather rudely rejected. Given that she'd just met Rarity, and under possibly damaging circumstances, I thought it would be entirely possible for Twilight to join Shady in Canterlot even if somewhat reluctantly.

I would have taken the story down the path of Twilight's magic having another episode and knocking them all out. Rarity would have woken up first and escaped to find the others. Twilight would have then had to wrestle with her choice, and I'm honestly not sure if she would have come back after saying yes to Nightmare Moon. Nightmare Moon or one of the other villains could have much more easily hung Shining Armor over her, and it wouldn't have been difficult to show her several of the more unpleasant ponies who'd supported Celestia making Twilight think much less in terms of good guys and bad guys, but in shades of gray and her friend is on one side.

I'm really not sure where it would have gone from there. I obviously didn't take that path so I never gave it much thought. Twilight has always seemed too good a pony at heart for me to have justified it as a logical outcome of a world where Rainbow Dash didn't do her sonic rainboom. That as you know has always been my bottom line.

So enjoy the beginning of the final installments of Hoofed by Your Own Petard. There are three chapters left from this point so stay tuned for a fast moving story.