Chapters 27 to 29 - Reflections and Behind-The-Scenes · 9:57am Mar 31st, 2017
That was a bumpy ride we all just had in the whimsical adventures of RariTwi: Ghostbusters Edition.
Ghostrescuers?
HUGE SPOILERS FOR CHAPTERS 27 TO 29 OF ENCHANTED LIBRARY BELOW THE BREAK.
And with EL’s longest chapter yet, the mini-arc within the curse arc comes to an end, and even though only now have the dominos begun to fall, and our heroine survived to tell the tale!
And more than that, the author survived to write the tale! Kinda surprised, honestly.
These five chapters, going from 25 to 29, were something I’ve been planning for a really, really long time. As I’ve mentioned before, nearly 65% of Part 1 of EL was planned before chapter 1 was even posted, and the curse arc was a large part of it. In fact, several paragraphs of Rarity’s meltdown in front of Luna’s statue were taken from a first draft I wrote back in May of 2015.
There’s a lot to deconstruct here, actually, so this is in many ways a behind-the-scenes of Enchanted Library.
Starting with the books!
A reader, or potential reader really, told me recently that he’d been put off from the fic for a while simply because he thought it would take forever to find all 30 books. It made me laugh. To think Rarity would actually find all the books!
In the story itself, Discord mentions he came up with the books on the fly, which is actually true in a meta sense, since I also took it very much as a silly excuse to keep Rarity coming back.
Zecora was also there, having reappeared from her...er… very long week-long trip. Stuff happens, y’know! Trips get extended! Just like how EL was supposed to be 100k tops, and now it’s officially 300k! I’ll never be free of this fanfic.
The Discord scene was actually one of the most delightful scenes I’ve ever had the pleasure of writing. The first draft of it always had Twicord and Book Bringer Discord, and then I took out Twicord, and then I was in a very bad mood one day and decided that TO HECK WITH IT, I’M KEEPING TWICORD BECAUSE IT’S COOL.
You’ll find that a lot of things that happen in EL are purely the result of me going: wouldn’t it be cool if X happened, though???
The Book Bringer, too, is another thing that finally gets revealed! For those of you who’ve been doing the ciphers, one of the very early ones accused somepony of being a liar! Well, now you know who it was! Of course, questions still remain! Why did Discord really lead Rarity into the library? He didn’t really answer much in 29, did he?
Though we did, for once, find out a bit more about the truth inside the library. If you go back to the very first interlude, Twilight mentions the barrier being black, while Chapter 2 (or 3) clearly defines it as a raspberry color. We’ll see more of this in upcoming chapters, especially since we’re now reaching the true climax of Act III.
There’s also the matter of Rarity’s meltdown!
Rarity’s meltdown was…
Well, let me interrupt for a moment. There’s another story I have called Injuring Eternity (and to those who’ve read it, the Harmony Life dreams--particularly the one in 29—were absolutely callbacks to IE). There’s a scene in the fifth chapter of Injuring Eternity, right at the end, that is the reason that fic exists. My sheer desire to write that down and post it was what drove me through everything that came before it.
Inside Enchanted Library, there are three scenes to which the fic owes its life, and Rarity’s meltdown in Chapter 29 was one of them. And yet, as many of my prereaders saw, sticking to this arc was hard. I honestly thought I would be prepared for the reactions to the chapter, and I guess I wasn’t. The weekend after 27, I must have spent about two days trying to rewrite the entire arc! But I stuck to it in the end, because this arc was such an integral part of the Act, that the only way not to do it was by cancelling the fic.
God, I’ve never been so close to perma-cancelling EL in my life.
Anyway, it was a very interesting writing exercise, honestly. For three chapters, my main character would be the villain! But she wasn’t really the villain, was she? It was a struggle to decide what to do. It’s never pretty to see a main character turn evil, but at the same time, it didn’t feel right to have Rarity take this in stride. Things had been going too well for her for too long! But having her meltdown, well… There was the risk of having readers turn on her, which was obviously not a good idea.
I mean, the internal debate I had over the scene with Rainbow Dash and the locked door! I felt like it would be a powerful scene, but should I risk it?
So, to have her react, or to have her take it in stride, that was the question. And the answer was clear! This is Rarity! Yes, she cannot be canon Rarity, and her path in the story couldn’t have had her weeping on her red couch, but the only way this could go down was with her having the meltdown of the century. She needed to be selfish, she needed to push others away, she needed to act out because only by going through this would she have growth.
Yet, it had to be justified.
Enchanted Library has always followed one idea: no one is totally bad, and no one is totally good. Her friends, or as I tried to write them at least, were well-meaning but just as lost as she was. I tried to be realistic with it, or as realistic as you can get in a universe of magic ponies. I was honestly afraid of going through with this all but, in retrospect, I’m glad I stuck to my guns. It was hard, it was very hard not to call it quits and move to a new fandom, but damn if I took the shot.
There was also the matter of the nightmares Rarity had with Harmony Life. It goes without saying that my readers who’ve read my other longfics knew it was coming (bearing in mind that these were the same readers who didn’t believe they were real because they know I’m too much RariTwi trash for that.
I’m quite proud of these interludes, but mostly because of how I managed to do something I’ve always wanted, which was to take a running joke or silly element and make it tragic. Honestly, I felt such shameless joy when Rarity so casually offered The Necklace™ to Harmony, and three of my prereaders reacted with “WHAT RARITY NO NO”.
And then the teleportation line in 29! Everyone thought it was a running joke, but HA HA NOW IT IS PAIN
But ahem, I’m getting rambly here.
This arc pushed me in a lot of ways, and not necessarily good ways. I’m better now, of course, now that the storm has passed, but heavens, did it leave destruction it its wake. I suppose this is one of those cases where life imitates art! Too much, maybe.
Anyway, as always, thank you for reading and sticking with me in this imperfect but heartfelt ride. It was a very tough one, and for most of it, I was very close to giving up, but I’ve given so much of me to this fic that quitting it… I don’t think the regret would ever leave me.
I don’t know when the next chapter will come up, as I did write over 50k in the span of two months, but I’ll try to keep the wait as short as I can without hindering the quality. This story has always been written from the heart, and through hard and good times, I intend for it to stay that way.
Both an end and a beginning are fast approaching for our heroine and her princess, and, well, you know the saying: Hell hath no fury like a Princess Twilight deprived of her favorite unicorn.
Thanks for reading,
- Monochromatic
So... Many...late... Nights.... Ugh...*thud*
Worth it. Thanks for giving the true fans of this fic (so many of them) a chance to see it to the end with you.
Good things that you can insist.
Thanks your lovely fiction.
This is now one of my all time favorite story's on the Site. Thanks you for writing this story.
What fun is there when the enemy team doesn't even show up to play? A little nudge here and a little nudge there really gets the tragedy going.
pinkie.mylittlefacewhen.com/media/f/img/mlfw1235_Discord_go_on.gif
Thanks for putting up with so much Mono. I can't really speak for everyone but it really means a lot to me when you take leaps of faith. And it's not just for the sake of elevating the tension but to actually tell a story. I think you really nailed it!
Now it's time to deal with the consequences.
This arc was fantastic. It all hit me smack in the feels.
I may be totally barking up the wrong tree here, but all along I've been convinced that the girls taking up their elements is going to have to come into play, and the curse part really sealed that for me (at least with respect to rares). Despite her superficial generosity, all along she's been acting with selfish motivations to free Twilight. Once we learned the true nature of the curse, and even moreso after Rarity's first failed attempt to get back to the library, I suspected that the key was going to be giving up on her dream and committing to freeing Twilight for Twilight's sake. I may still be off, but there are definitely suggestions of that in ch29.
Also, I totally called Book Bringer being Discord :)
Blogs like this are why you are my favorite author, other than your stellar stories, of course.
For me this arc was comparable to Sam and Frodos journey to Mordor in Lord of the Rings.
)
Very important for the whole story and building up the charakters but an agonizing pain for myself to read.
(I know the comparison may be weird but nothing better came to my mind
EL was and one of the first stories on this site that I really enjoyed and got emotionally invested in there are few where I really wanted the charakters to get a happy end.
I encourage you to keep going because this story is really something special.
Well then! Moving onward in this magnificent novel!
Glad you stuck to your vision. As much as it hurt — and dammit did it hurt — it was, as you've noted, realistic. I actually wasn't able to see Rarity as the villain in any way, just deeply hurt and confused. Rather relatable, really.
So! Great chapters. I look forward to the next ones. Thank you so much for enriching our lives with this story.
You did good, mono. You did good.
I am sorry to hear that this segment was so hard for you, although I suppose it only makes sense that if it is hard for us to read, it would be even harder for you to write. That said, Rarity's collapse was (in my opinion) not only totally believable but, as you said, inevitable. There was no shaking this off, no having a nice trip to the spa and emerging poised and ready to strike back. I did not, however, feel she ever became the villain of the piece, even at the depths of her darkness. Troubled and lashing out, maybe, but never truly evil.
Thank you for persevering. Thank you for the beautiful gift that you have given this community.
I can't wait to see what comes next!
(well, except, um, I can, because I don't want to pressure you and make you feel even more stressed out about this fic or anything 
)
A story of this scope that doesn't hurt somewhere along the way is doing something wrong.
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Actually, that's a great comparison. In fact, I think you could go farther and compare Rarity's descent into madness and eventual meltdown over the curse to Frodo's struggle against - and eventual succumb to - the will of the ring. But who is going to be her Gollum? I want to say Discord himself, but my gut says it will be Awe. I have no idea how that would play out, or if the analogy will break down completely, but it's something interesting to consider.
More generally, I've been thinking a lot about the curses. Someone pointed out in the comments recently that chaos magic, with its semi-intelligence and unpredictable nature, would make for terrible long-lasting curses. They'd eventually blow themselves up somehow. Discord's statement that Twilight herself is powering her entrapment gives a plausible explanation for that - she's essentially constantly refreshing the spell on her, keeping it alive and, more importantly, focused.
That leads me to wonder about the other spells. Is Luna's entrapment powered by her own conviction that she can't break out by herself? Is her banishment from the dreams of adults driven by her belief instead of theirs? Is the curse preventing anyone from finding Twilight powered by Cadence's (and now Denza's) belief in it? If so, I get the feeling Awe may be more critical to finding a way to break it than anyone realizes.
I honestly can believe Rarity would act like that. I mean, probably (as you mentioned) not canon Rarity but Rarity would.
I hope on a personal note you're doing well.
All the best! Looking forward to the next chapter. I hope.
And here I was thinking that the only reason these chapters were harder than any other to write was because they separated Twilight and Rarity for an extended period of time.
Come hell or high waters, you're still an amazing writer, so thank you for not canceling the story. ontop of that, thank you for sticking with it
I love this story, great plot, good twists, not a fan of an (S)he x (S)he shipping, but the story is so good, I read it anyway, with a hard time when I am waiting for new chapters, 40% cooler job author.