Director's cut: What Happened To Your Voice? (And Who's Cuter?) · 6:19am Dec 20th, 2020
First, funny story: I wrote this story as part of a speed write contest. That in itself isn't funny, but what is funny is that the contest was about the background character Amethyst Star, of simply "Sparkler". Obviously, this story doesn't use Sparkler, so it couldn't enter the contest. The contest's name was even called the Sparkler contest, but because I had very rarely even thought about Sparkler, it didn't click that maybe Sparkler was a character.
I might never live this one down. Amethyst Star/Sparkler now one background character I won't be forgetting anytime soon.
With that out of the way, on to the real point of the blog.
I got the idea for this story about 4 or 5 months ago. I know Sombra's surprising voice in the season 9 premiere was talked about by fans, and one user even had fun with it in a story. However, I wasn't sure if a story did a similar thing with how Chrysalis's voice changed in the season 6 finale so it lost its echo.
And eventually, a story was born!
When I was thinking of how it would go, I wanted something crazy to happen. Something I hadn't done in a story yet, but would be wacky. That was partly where the idea of Starlight Glimmer actually dying came in, but even that didn't stop her! Of course, it was played for laughs. This is also a good time to say what is one of my favorite lines in the whole story.
Starlight huffed in annoyance. “Well, I wasn’t ready to die, but you don’t see me complaining!”
The scenes with the Princesses running from Applejack, with Flurry Heart roasting them, is also one of my favorite parts of this story.
Moving on. It's not unusual for Lauren Faust to be mentioned, or at least in the phrase like "Oh my Faust!" in stories, as many know by now. So, I thought to take it even further and have a character mention Jim Miller as "Big J". Since he's often called "Big Jim" anyway, having him be called "Big J" by the ponies made even more sense!
Before I get to the edits and changes, a previous story of mine, She Did WHAT To You?!, also took place in the season 6 finale, and both it and "What Happened To Your Voice? (And Who's Cuter?)" starts at about the same part of the episode. If you have read "She Did WHAT To You?!", you'd noticed that the exposition is less in "What Happened To Your Voice? (And Who's Cuter?)". You can thank experience for that: I don't give as much exposition like I used to.
On to the cuts and edits.
I'll start with something that was cut, but I bought back in.
Inside one of the green cocoons dangling from the hive’s ceiling, the semi-conscious Applejack weakly pointed a hoof toward the cocoon imprisoning Twilight. She followed up by slightly curving the hoof up, as if she instinctively gave the pony version of the middle finger. While also semi-conscious, Twilight instinctively shuddered.
That paragraph I was on the fence on. I took it out at some point, but I thought it was too good to not use, so I put it back in.
The first noteworthy edit is to now Thorax fainted. He fell on the floor in the earlier versions, but that was due to how I forgot his legs were stuck on the floor. When I remembered, I edited things so he remained standing. I still had him facehoof, but more for comedy reasons.
The first cut that I didn't put back in was a fourth wall break from the narrator. It felt a bit too forced, so I took it out. What the line was, I have below.
Okay, I’m just an underpaid narrator, but even I must say that this is just crazy! Even death can’t stop Starlight Glimmer.
An add-on was when Rarity and Pinkie graded Chrysalis's scream after Starlight's ghost returned. I put it in late in editing.
Yet another add-on to when Rarity asked Starlight why wasn't she mad at Chrysalis for killing her. That wasn't in the early drafts, but I felt someone would have asked why Starlight was so angry at Twilight for lying, but seemed to not be mad at Chrysalis, who KILLED her.
There are quite a few cuts in the story, but most are very small and not worth mentioning, so I'm actually surprised I don't have more cuts & edits to bring up.
One last thing. Something I through about a week or two after I submitted the story that I thought would have been hilarious if I thought about it in time. Since Trixie was in the cave, Twilight could have looked at her, hoping she could help save her from Applejack. If she did, Trixie would have said something like "Oh, so now you want to trust the Great and Powerful Trixie! But Trixie wouldn't help anyway. She doesn't want to be killed today".
