Reflections on the road not taken.

Believe it or not, I put some thought into the potential differences between the main 'verse and the mirror 'verse when writing up my version of "Reflections". It helped that canon came along and filled in a few major gaps, particularly in regards to Sombra. Now, for the record, I don't hold my version of events to be canon, just a plausible take on what could have happened based on the information available. This of course assumes the same origins between the two universes for all the parties involved - Celestia and Luna, Discord, Sombra, Chrysalis and the changelings and so on.

I don't think I need to elaborate on the differences between what was spelled out in my story and what was spelled out in canon. I'd just like to point out that Amore, in both versions of events, may have carefully considered her decisions in regards to Sombra. In canon, she did nothing, and lots of bad things happened. Here, she adopted Sombra, and different bad things happened, but different good things happened too. And those changes led to Sombra having a happier and better life, albeit one with some guilt over what happened to his world's version of Celestia.

I was purposefully vague about Discord, simply because we know nothing about his origins. But him being a good guy from the start means that the Elements of Harmony were never needed to lock him away in stone, and thus, they remained in the Tree.

Chrysalis and the changelings being on the side of good? Consider for a moment that they feed on love; the comics outright suggest that they don't just feed on it, they gorge on it like locusts. In the main 'verse, the Crystal Empire helped to spread light and love across Equestria, but it went missing before they came on the scene. I'm guessing that here, Chrysalis may have sniffed it out as the strongest source and made a beeline for it with her minions, and something happened there that caused her to go good. No attacks on Timbucktu or Trot, and the changelings wound up being an equal part of Equestrian society. I'm being purposely vague about the details, mind, but that's my decision.

I opted against mentioning Tirek, mostly because I suspect things went pretty much the same for him in both worlds. Not sure how things went for the Sirens, but I like to think they got turned around. If nothing else, they certainly weren't banished. Sunset Shimmer got a mention, yes, but I'm thinking she had a happier life in this course of events than she did otherwise.

I've elaborated a bit on my thoughts concerning Trixie's motivations in another journal. I'm thinking that Princess Trixie returned to her studies, both in an effort to improve her magical talents and generally to enrich herself. Those studies would lead to her meeting her world's Sunset and to both of them becoming alicorns. As for Prof. Doo versus Derpy, well...I don't like the idea of accusing any mother of being lousy (unless, y'know, they're obviously lousy) - getting her eyes fixed in one universe but not in another was simply something I decided on. Original plan was that the operation to fix her eyes had gone wrong and she was partially blinded, with the glasses acting akin to a VISOR from Star Trek as vision replacement, but I opted against going there. Seemed too harsh and dark.

Anyway, that's everything about the story, and now some useless trivia! The chapter titles that adapted the actual comics all take their names from works that either dealt with parallel worlds where things are askew from normal or from stories where alternate worlds are accessed by magic mirror; specifically, Star Trek, Alice in Wonderland, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, and Transformers. "The Road Not Taken" took its chapter title from the Robert Frost poem, while "Love is an Open Door" took its name from a song in "Frozen". Let it go, people, those songs are catchy.

Now, the critical question - why do this? Am I so egotistical to think that I could do this story better than the original creators? The answer is no - if I could do it better, I'd be getting paid to produce official content right along with 'em. I wrote this take on "Reflections" because events in my storyline would have led the story to go differently, as shown in-story, and because it establishes all sorts of things that will come into play later on. Do I plan on doing something like this again in the near-future? Yes and no; I'm not going to do a fan rewrite or edit of every official story to make them conform to my version of events, for a number of reasons - most already do, I don't have the time, and it's just easier to say "because of X, the events of Y happened earlier/later/never". It's only when a story is significantly different, or when I think a published comic needs a serious overhaul, that I'll end up rejigging it for my own 'verse. Sadly, as of right now, it's the later multi-part stuff from Cook-Price that will see such treatment more than anything.

Anyway, onto the next story! May it be more positively received than this one was!