Director's cut: Caught and Punished, chapters 20, 21, and 22

So you will have some new Caught and Punished” content until chapter 26 comes out in about two weeks, I’m finishing the “director’s cuts” of the chapters I haven’t done for them yet.

First off, chapter 20. A big thing I’ll note was that I almost forgot about Double Diamond. I planned for him to fully forgive Starlight after she played her role in stopping the changeling attack, but when I was writing the first half of chapter 20, I wasn’t thinking about Diamond. 

Speaking of that guy, one thing I wondered about was having him be one of the ponies Chrysalis caught, but I quickly scratched the idea. A big reason I did was that I couldn’t think of a good way to have him come to Ponyville and not have it seem TOO convenient. I had a bit of trouble as it is coming up with a good reason for Twilight to be alone in her castle back in chapter 16, and she lives in Ponyville!

Another idea (which I really should have said in the director’s cut for chapters 18 & 19) was that I wondered about having Sunset Shimmer be part of the rescue mission. One reason I chose not to was because Twilight, in canon, never seemed to even think about asking Sunset for help in Equestrian matters, and I couldn’t think of a good enough reason for the Twilight in this story to suddenly do it here. I also couldn’t think of a role for Sunset, besides her just being there, so it would have just made things tougher for me for no in-story reason.

And speaking of Sunset, at this point in this AU, she and Starlight are already friends, but the time they spend together, as well as the time Sam and Starlight spend in the EQG world. is off-screen. After chapter 20 was close to being fully edited, I thought about editing in Sunset to be at the awards ceremony, but chose to leave things as is. When this story’s finished, I might write a few bonus chapters showing Sam and Starlight in the EQG world if there’s interest in it, and if I’m in the mood to do it.

As for cuts and edits, there are no noteworthy ones in chapter 20.

Now for chapter 21.

It was a long time coming to give a real glimpse about how Starlight’s parents treated her (or this AU’s version of Starlight), so that was a huge point of this chapter. It was also to help set up the next “arc” of this story. This is going to be its final arc.

The name of Starlight’s mother seems to have never been stated. I’ve seen a few fics use “Aurora” as the name, and I was close to using it myself, but I went with “Starshine”. One reason is, if you take “Star” in “Starshine” and “Light” in “Firelight”, you’ll get...Starlight. 

Ponies’ surnames can work weirdly a lot of times, but I chose to have Starlight’s parents both have “Glimmer” as theirs to make things simple. If you missed it, there’s a reason why Starshine Glimmer is a pink pony. Mix pink with Firelight’s coat color, and you’ll get something similar to Starlight’s coat color. Starlight is sometimes called a pink pony too, but she’s not pink in how Pinkie Pie is a pink pony. On a side note, Starlight is called more colors in stories than any other pony as far as I know. I’ve seen Glim Glam called pink, purple, light-purple, purplish-pink, violet, lilac, and lavender.

Also, fun fact: Starlight’s name was apparently supposed to be “Aurora Glimmer”. But, something about Aurora being trademarked by some company or movie (I don’t remember which) or whatever meant they had to change her name to Starlight.

As for noteworthy cuts and edits, there is one. I started off writing this story in third person. However, before I got more than halfway, I decided to go with the idea I had been thinking about and have Starlight narrate when the scenes either don't have Sam, or when she’s the focus of that part of the story. The flashback in the middle of the chapter still needed to be in third person. Outside of that narration change, though, nothing notable was cut or edited in chapter 21.

Lastly, chapter 22. I don’t have too much to say about this chapter.

One thing is that when I was thinking of how Starlight and Sunburst’s reunion would go, I thought about having Sam, the mane 6, and Spike be with Starlight when she was talking to Sunburst. I quickly threw that idea out, since I didn’t think they needed to be with her. Something I almost forgot about was keeping Rainbow a little peeved at Sunburst for leaving Starlight behind...or so she thought he did.

As for cuts and edits, again, nothing worth mentioning. Save for some little tweaks that usually happens when you edit stories, Chapters 20-22 pretty much stayed the same during and after editing.

That, however, changes in chapters 23-25, but all that will be in the next director’s cut.