Second Blink · 11:41pm Aug 22nd, 2017
Many of you will know that I wrote Not The First, a prequel to ocalhoun's fic Blink. It was a lot of fun to write, and I got a lot of positive feedback.
Now, after many months, I've returned to that universe with a second story: Why?
Why? is a sequel to a sequel, specifically Blinking by lumberjack. In that story, a Twilight finally managed to escape from the pocket dimension with the help of one of the previous one's that was stuck there. My new story takes place immediately after, going over some events surrounding this survivor's return. And also answering a couple of big questions.
In fact, this entire fic is the response to a single question I've been asking since I first read Blink: why does the teleportation spell do what it does? I couldn't think of a logical, physics-related reason. For a long time, all I could come up with was that the bubbles full of death were going to be peace offerings for some eldritch abomination living in the space between worlds. Thankfully, I came up with a much better reason.
If you have read the fic (and not the comments section) and are confused about what I wrote, there's going to be a break and then a picture and then some spoiler-y explanations.
First of all, the lack of gore. At first I was a bit disappointed in myself, considering the nature of Not The First. But I quickly realized that I could give this one a Teen rating and reach a wider audience; also, you don't need gore to have horror. I think it's clear at the end that Celestia is just trying to make Twilight feel better. Her explanation for Twilight's existential crisis might as well be, "Don't think about it." In other words, while it sounds good and comforting, it's utter bullshit. Which is fine. On top of that, the existential questions are secondary to the moral debate, which is what I really wanted in this story. Is it worth all the suffering that ponies who teleport undergo to keep Equestria as a whole from chaos and destruction?
Some people may have issues with Celestia seeming OOC or with the explanation itself, how I linked this one spell to every major Equestrian disaster. The OOC thing... look, it was a stressful situation. I even put in that Twilight had never seen Celestia act that way before. And towards the end I definitely tried to make her act more in character with show!Celestia. As for the second part there, I'm not the first to link every disaster to a single cause (great example here). I might be the first to do so seriously, but that's not really the point. The point is that I wanted something big enough and dangerous enough to make Equestria's leaders do something drastic and yet be understandable for doing so. I wanted something that would definitely make you go, "okay, that's a good reason to not use the old spell" but also would allow Twilight to argue back a little.
Last thing, some reflections: looking back, I think I could have done a better job justifying Celestia's actions. I could have had a bit of dialogue in which she told Twilight about some other options that they tried, and that could've allowed be to get rid of the one hope spot (Twilight saying she'd make a better spell), thus putting more into a true horror bit as Twilight realizes that she has only two options: train herself to never teleport again, or else simply accept the horrible fate that awaits her each time, as Celestia seems to have done. I could also have added in a line about how few times we've seen Celestia teleport in the show.
But on the whole, I'm happy with how this turned out. It's not my best story, but it's far from being my worst. Hope everyone can at least now understand my thought processes a little.
Ooh, looking forward to it.