How I'd fix it

I've never made it a secret that I have many issues with FiM canon. There's a lot of warped morality (especially in the latter seasons), several continuity snarls, and plot points that are either nonsensical, horrifying if you think about them, either of the above depending on interpretation, or both. And as long as I've had these issues, I've privately mused on how they might be fixed, if the writers were actually mature enough to take criticism and decent enough to try to fix their errors, instead of taking cheap shots at naysayers while hiding behind the "nobody's perfect" bs excuse. The problem is, as the series progressed and the problems multiplied and compounded, more and more potential fixes were rendered impossible or inadequate, and as a result, the required steps for fixing things became darker and darker while the victory at the end became more and more pyrrhic. After the finale, it's become virtually impossible to fix even if another season were added with the express purpose of fixing things, and getting close would almost certainly require a bloodbath. Bare minimum, Celestia, Luna, Twilight, Starlight, and Discord would need to die, and Harmony would need to somehow be permanently annihilated (and as the finale demonstrated, the consequences of that are potentially apocalyptic). And while I may be particularly zealous about things being addressed and resolved even if it causes extreme pain in the short term, I do ultimately want to see happy endings. Sure, AUs where events are rewritten can provide fixes without darkening events, but there's always lurking in the background the knowledge that this isn't how things happened in canon. What I really want to see is a way for canon to be resolved with all its issues - both horrific and nonsensical - dealt with, but without dooming the world in the process.

A little while ago, I thought of a potential way of pulling it off, and now the idea won't get out of my head. So now I'm writing the outline for it here in the hope that it will help clear my head. It's pretty rough around the edges, and doesn't address everything, and in some ways it's a massive cop-out, but it deals with the major issues while not getting much darker than the low point of The Return of Harmony. Before I start it, however, I want to note that this story is almost certainly never going to ever be written. I'm never going to myself - I'm a crap writer and would want another set of eyes to help me spot issues and flesh out bare points even if I did try - and the only person likely to read this and agree with me has his own AU to worry about already. On the extremely unlikely event that someone stumbles on this, likes the idea, and wants to give a try at writing it, go ahead, but I'm not holding my breath. That said, here's what I've got:

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The story begins long after the end of the show - long enough that all the main characters other than the alicorns and maybe Spike are long dead. Twilight takes a moment to reminisce on her pleasant memories of her first friends. But as she does so, she starts to notice oddities and inconsistencies in events, the behavior of others, and even herself, that she can't explain. Things such as "How did Celestia and Luna get a vision of Tirek's escape, and why didn't they have any visions of any other threats? And how did Tirek escape Tartarus in the first place when I personally checked to make sure no one escaped when I brought Cerberus back?" "Why did Flim and Flam turn to con artistry? The SSCS6k worked, they should have been able to find success elsewhere" " Why did I forgive Starlight for nearly destroying the world and Tempest for conquering Canterlot, but still hold a grudge against Trixie even after she repented of the Alicorn Amulet incident? Why did Starlight surrender anyway? She was so willing to get her way regardless of collateral damage that she destroyed the time travel spell even after I showed her the potential consequences of her actions" "Why did the CMC get cutie marks in understanding cutie marks? Up until that time, all their antics revolved around the fact that they didn't understand them. How is it that they could understand a pony's mark better than that pony, when the mark reflects an epiphany the pony had about themselves? And why did getting a cutie mark change from a quiet, subtle event to a giant light show after they got their marks?" "Why did Rainbow Dash turn into such a horrible pony after my ascension?" "Why did I ascend, but none of my friends did? They were just as necessary to saving the world as I was. Come to think of it, how did I ascend? I was told that it was a reward for finishing Star Swirl's spell, but... how does finishing it make me worthy of alicornhood? What ascended me? And on that note, what did the finished spell even do?" Eventually, her musings would lead to the question "If Discord was so willing to betray Fluttershy to share absolute power with Tirek, why did he throw away his chance of wielding absolute power himself after Fluttershy sided with him over us?"

And with that realization, Twilight's eyes fly open.

She finds herself on the outskirts of a frozen over Sweet Apple Acres, once again a unicorn and the size of a normal pony. Almost immediately, she's tackle-hugged by a weeping Fluttershy and a still-baby, non-winged Spike. They explain to her that after Discord's gloating over how Fluttershy wouldn't do anything to stop him, he did something to the rest of the bearers, "just in case". The other bearers are lying on the ground nearby, all unconscious. Twilight surmises that Discord had locked them in some sort of magic sleep, programming their subconsciouses to create dream worlds that they wouldn't want to wake up from to keep them from acting. All her memories from Discord restoring Sweet Apple Acres onward was part of Twilight's dream. When she saw through the inconsistency that the whole prison hinged upon, her mind rejected it, breaking the spell. Twilight quickly uses some mental magic to wake her fellow bearers from their slumber, and together they go to defeat Discord.

When they find him, he's at first unconcerned, noting how Fluttershy already promised to never oppose him. This quickly turns to panic when he sees Fluttershy reluctantly step up with her element to join the others, but he's too late to stop them from unleashing the rainbow. However, partway through the petrification process, the rainbow starts to flicker, fade, and eventually stops as the elements become dull and cracked, leaving Discord free enough to undo what petrification had taken place. Everyone present is shocked and confused by this, Discord included. He quickly invades the minds of the others, scouring their memories to try and find a reason for why the elements couldn't stop him when he hadn't screwed with their personalities. He apparently finds his explanation, as he eventually lets out a triumphant, maniacal laugh. He notes that if he knew that Harmony was not just boring but also self-destructive, he'd have set the bearers to become as they currently are while they were in the labyrinth during their first encounter. He then bids them adieu, saying this failure gave him some ideas for having fun with the princesses, and teleports away.

Rainbow Dash quickly explodes at Fluttershy, blaming her for the failure and saying that if she had just stood against Discord when he first refused to restore Sweet Apple Acres, this wouldn't have happened. The others quickly rally to Fluttershy's side and try to get Dash to stand down, but all they accomplish is making themselves targets of her fury as well. When confronted on where this sudden vitriol came from, Dash reveals that she's been harboring a grudge against all of them ever since the Mare-Do-Well incident. From there she launches into a rant over all their sins in that event, including how they thought so little of her that they didn't even try talking to her about her ego, how their plan to stop her was to ruin her reputation and shatter her sense of self-worth, their laughing at her to her face over how much pain they were causing her, and their hypocrisy in doing the very thing they were condemning Dash for in bragging about their accomplishments (including AJ bragging about not bragging!) - except they were doing it not just to fluff their own egos, but to make somepony else feel worthless as well. On that point she points out how Fluttershy was even worse than the others in that regard. At least AJ, Pinkie, and Twilight were bragging about lives they had actually saved, as Dash did when she was bragging. At least Rarity only bragged about the costumes. But Fluttershy's boast was of actually caring about the safety of others, despite the fact that she hadn't saved a single life as Mare-Do-Well while Dash had saved several. The only thing Fluttershy had done as Mare-Do-Well was strip Dash of her one solace that at least she could fly when Mare-Do-Well couldn't. And this from Dash's oldest "friend" - and a pony that would rather betray the world to Discord than do anything that could be construed as "mean" to the ultimate evil. She caps it all off by declaring that the real lesson she learned that day was that none of them were ever truly her friends and that she couldn't trust any of them. The only reason she pretended otherwise was because as the bearer of the element of Loyalty, she had an obligation both to stay close to them and to force herself to go along with whatever they did to her; now that the elements no longer work, she sees no reason to continue doing so. Applejack counters with a sarcastic remark about how "loyal" Dash is proving she truly is, which prompts Dash to start tearing into her "honest" double standards over the egos of others. Pinkie tries to get them to stop arguing, but that only gets Dash to lash out at her for never taking anything seriously. The fight continues, possibly with Rarity and/or Spike getting sucked in, but Twilight falls into contemplation over what she's seeing. Eventually, she shouts for everyone to stop, simultaneously grabbing hold of them all with her telekinesis to further get their attention. She says that Rainbow Dash is right - but not for the reasons she thinks she is. She then goes on to say that all six of them have perverted their elements - stretched them beyond what is morally acceptable and twisted them beyond recognition. That's why they failed to stop Discord - they could no longer stop evil because the six have turned the very concepts they embody into tools of evil, and if they are to have any hope of stopping Discord, they have to first make things right amongst themselves.

This begins a long and painful series of reflections where the mane six have to face up to everything they've done. Fluttershy has to come to terms with the fact that kindness to the unrepentant is cruelty to the innocent, both in preventing their past victims from getting justice and in letting the wicked create new victims. Pinkie's forced to take a look at how her single-minded drive to have fun at any cost and assumption that everyone else is having fun when she is led to her wrecking Luna's attempt to repair her reputation and nearly ruining the rest of Cranky's already-miserable life - and in so doing, having to finally, truly learn the lesson that what might be idle amusement for her may very well be solemn torment for others. Rarity's very generosity is called into question, given how much debt she's in to Spike for all the labor he's done for her and the Fire Ruby she manipulated him into giving her. Ultimately, she has to realize that being "generous" with other people's money isn't generosity at all, but theft. As for Applejack, well, I've already written an entire blog entry on how she's actually a liar and a hypocrite, with very nearly all my examples taking place before this story in the timeline. Dash gets off easier than the others - while she has to face her hypocrisy over Trixie (and on that note, so does Rarity) when Applejack has to confront hers on that subject, she's ultimately the victim in the incident that shattered the true loyalty between her and the other bearers and forced her into either faking loyalty or taking a swan dive into fanaticism. Instead, the others need to admit to how they were the true villains in the Mare-Do-Well story, and try to make things right with Dash. As for Twilight, she has two things to confront - her treating Spike essentially as if he's a slave (forcing him to do everything, including writing, for her while she does whatever she pleases living on the crown's dime, and doing nothing to protect him from Rarity's predations) and her accepting all the issues brought up as just and good to the point of reporting them as positives to Celestia. Both of these, she realizes, stem from the same source* - her seeing Friendship as the end-all-be-all. As long as she just said the word "friendship" over whatever was happening, she was able to convince herself that everything was right with the world, even when anyone who applied even the tiniest amount of critical thinking could see they obviously weren't. Eventually, as the last of the six finishes facing their sins, they all come to the conclusion that their realizing where they screwed up isn't enough for any of them. They all need to work to undo the damage they've done, to face the consequences for their actions, and to make things right - both with each other, and with those outside their circle. They each find their personal tasks daunting, but they all promise to support each other in their efforts. With this resolution, the elements release brilliant flashes of light as their cracks are mended and their previous luster is restored. With the means of victory once more within their grasp, the six rush to Canterlot to face Discord once again.

However, on the way to Canterlot, Twilight starts appearing as though something is troubling her. When they arrive at the city gates, one of the others becomes concerned enough about this that they ask Twilight what's wrong. She admits that the recent admissions they all had to make led her to start thinking over other events in her life, wondering what other problems she might have missed, and she doesn't like what she's noticed. Specifically, she's started to notice how Celestia's been manipulating her ever since the Summer Sun Celebration. She's tried to convince herself that it was all for the greater good, but at the same time, she can't help but feel hurt that Celestia wouldn't trust her. And beyond that, she's disturbed by the fact that Celestia was willing to gamble with the lives of innocent ponies by setting Twilight up with impossible conditions in both Nightmare Moon's return and The Crystal Empire's return instead of doing everything possible to ensure success. But it's killing her to even think about these things since Celestia's been her idol her entire life, and while she knows that this will just keep eating at her until its addressed, she's terrified of confronting Celestia with it - terrified of hurting Celestia, terrified of being thought less of by Celestia, terrified of what Celestia might do to her, but most of all, terrified of having her growing doubts being proven justified. The others quickly move to reassure her, saying that they'll stand by her side, both in confronting Celestia and in whatever comes after. But Twilight then admits that it's not just Celestia that she's starting to question, but herself as well. With that, she reveals how in her dream prison, she became an alicorn and a member of the ruling class, while the others didn't. She confesses that between her getting the most important element, Celestia picking her specifically to wield said element, and Celestia demanding that she alone save the Crystal Empire, a tiny portion of her has started to see herself as above everypony else. She hates this part of herself, but after her time in Discord's dream prison, she can no longer deny it exists. The others are quick to support her, pointing to their previous discussion over the elements of how everyone has some darkness that needs to be overcome, and promise to be by her side in trying to confront this, as they all already are for each other with what had come before. Thus reassured, the group head into Canterlot for the final battle.

The confrontation with Discord goes much the same way as the end of the season 2 opening - smug assurance that the elements won't work quickly turning to panic as he realizes he's lost, ending with him being petrified once more and the damage he's caused being undone. With him once again defeated, the mane six and Spike start looking for Celestia. When they do, she flings herself at Twilight, hugging her close and muttering a string of broken apologies, weeping uncontrollably all the while. When the group finally manages to calm Celestia down to the point that she can speak coherently, she reveals that Discord had used his power to drag her into visions of all the perils that she had ordered Twilight into underinformed and underequipped, pointing out how even a single slip-up would have meant her death, and how that would have meant evil's triumph if that had come to pass due to how Celestia deliberately set things up to place the fate of Equestria squarely on Twilight's shoulders - all with the point of proving that she and Discord weren't that different, in that they both used others as nothing but means to their respective ends and neither particularly cared what happened to anyone else as long as they got their way. The main differences between them were that Discord did things for his own twisted amusement while Celestia was pushing an agenda (except for setting the Gala up to be ruined, which she did for the lulz), and that Celestia was loved while Discord was hated. Discord then locked Celestia in a dream prison - but this one designed to torment her, forcing her to live out the aftermath of the villains winning over and over again because of her actions. But the worst part, Celestia admits, was that there wasn't a single point of Discord's that she could raise a substantial counter-argument against. She's come to hate herself from all of this, and is considering abdicating once all of Discord's mess is cleaned up, the only doubt in her mind about it being worry over what would happen in such a drastic power shift after she held the balance for a millennium. Twilight, moved by Celestia's open confession and obvious remorse, starts to reassure her that they can fix things, but she's interrupted by one of the others asking whether Discord might have gotten to Luna as well. The group, Celestia included, rushes to Luna's bedroom, where they find her somehow still trapped in whatever dream prison Discord had concocted for her, and Twilight's attempts to free her all fail. She and Celestia prepare to enter her dream to try and free her from the inside, and Pinkie insists that she be brought along with them - she wants to start making up for how she hurt Luna and in the past ASAP. Upon entering, the three find themselves in an Equestria where Night Eternal has come, with Nightmare Moon sitting on the throne and a populace that seems to both be terrified of her and adore her, often in ways that are contradictory. The group rushes to confront Nightmare Moon, with Celestia immediately calling out to her, urging her to recognize that this isn't real, that she isn't the demon that had possessed her in her weakness, that this is all just a nightmare created by Discord urging her to fight against it. But "Nightmare Moon" - or, as it quickly becomes apparent, Luna in Nightmare Moon's form - then reveals that she knows that this is all a nightmare - one that she deliberately started holding together after the elements tried to dispel it. When asked why, she says it's because this is the closest she's ever come to being accepted. Before her fall she had never been loved, and after being freed from the Nightmare things had only gotten worse. Instead of rebuilding the capital after her and Celestia's battle, a different city was built for Celestia, dedicated to her and with but a single throne. A holiday whose festivities essentially boiled down to the whole nation bowing to Celestia in worship was instituted, while Luna was written out of history aside from obscure legends about her fall and a holiday that depicted her as a cannibal. And when she had tried to change that holiday to celebrating her being liberated from the Nightmare instead, it all backfired. She had started to make inroads with the ponies of Ponyville with Twilight's and Applejack's help, but then Pinkie ruined all of her progress and Twilight suddenly took Pinkie's side. The only way she could get even the slightest semblance of acceptance was to live down to everyone's expectations, and let the celebration that depicted her as a cannibal continue. She finishes off by begging the three to leave, and let her stay in this cold, pale imitation of acceptance for the rest of her life, as it's the closest she'll ever get to the real thing. The others refuse to give up, however, and after a long and painful series of confessions, apologies, and promises that they'll tirelessly work to fix things, Twilight, Celestia, and Pinkie eventually convince Luna to let the dream fade and awaken.

There's no time to rest, however, as with both Celestia and Luna having been targeted by Discord, there's a good chance that Cadance was as well. As such, everyone rushes to the Crystal Empire to check on her. On the way, Twilight reluctantly confronts Celestia regarding all her past concerns, noting that as much as neither she nor Celestia may want to look at things, they need to if things are to ever be fixed. Celestia agrees, and admits that Twilight is right to be hurt by everything she's forced on her shoulders. She also admits that she doesn't have an excuse for her actions - but that she does have an explanation. However, she also says that the explanation involves matters that Cadance is currently in the dark about, and thus asks to wait until the Crystal Empire is set on the road to recovery, so that she can explain to everyone at once. Fortunately, while the Empire does show some signs of being disrupted by Discord's antics, it's already starting to get back to business as usual, with Cadance seemingly suffering no ill effects from whatever Discord had planned for her. Twilight laughs off her previous concern, saying that of course Discord wouldn't be able to affect somepony as pure as Cadance. At this, however, Cadance admits that it wasn't so much that Discord couldn't find any weakness to strike her at, but that she'd already confronted the issue herself beforehand. Discord had tried to needle her over the fact that her "royal duties" essentially boiled down to brainwashing others, and how that made her not so different from Chrysalis. However, Cadance had already come to this realization herself while she was Chrysalis' prisoner, and had already sworn off of using love magic except to break other mind-affecting magics, or in times of emergency, such as recharging Shining Armor's mana reserves at the end of the changeling invasion. When Discord learned this, he declared her to be a killjoy and went off somewhere else to cause havoc. Twilight, having looked up to Cadance all her life and being in favor of using mind control herself, is shocked by this revelation and tries to object, first by pointing out that love magic is Cadance's special talent. Cadance replies to this saying that just because somepony is good at something, doesn't mean it's a thing that should be done. Like with all things, just because one's talent means they can do something, doesn't mean they should. Twilight then tries to point out how she made ponies happier with her magic, but Cadance rejects that too, pointing out that what she created in others couldn't really be considered real, but something she forced upon them, regardless of what their opinion on the matter may be, or how it might impact their lives in other ways. Cadance even says here that she had originally intended to try and track down her former victims and, where possible, reverse her spells on them, but before she could start she was given the Crystal Empire to rule, which has demanded all her time and attention since. Twilight still isn't ready to accept this, but without being able to come up with any more points, all she can do is stammer. Celestia, having not fully realized what Cadance was capable of in the past and mentally connecting Twilight's behavior here with the Smarty Pants incident, comments that when all of this is over she's going to need to review Equestrian laws regarding mind-altering magic, and make Twilight take a remedial course in ethical use of magic. But that is for a later time, as Celestia asks Cadance to take the group somewhere private, deciding that since the Empire is already on the path to recovery, now is the time for her to make the revel she had mentioned earlier.

Once the group is in private, Celestia reveals that towards the end of his life, Star Swirl had been trying to develop a spell that could turn a member of one of the three primary pony tribes into an alicorn, but he died before he could complete it. Celestia had tried her hand at finishing the spell multiple times in the past, but was never able to come close to success, with many of her attempts backfiring catastrophically. It was these failed attempts, Celestia admits, that was the start of darkness for her. Unable to cope with her failure to save her beloved subjects from the plague of mortality, she eventually convinced herself that it wasn't that she specifically couldn't save them, but that they just couldn't be saved. And when that excuse began to ring hollow to her (since that doesn't mean she shouldn't keep trying), she convinced herself that the reason they couldn't be saved was that they weren't worthy of being saved. On some level, she always knew this excuse was bullshit, but she feared that facing the truth would only lead her to madness, and was already too far gone to realize that she had already taken the first steps of insanity by walking this path. It is because of this that she eventually became so careless with the lives of others, and one of the reasons she became so manipulative - the other being that misdirection eventually became habit for her from all the times she deflected the blame from herself for her failed attempts to complete the ascension spell. The reason Celestia put so much pressure on Twilight, and the reason that she made Twilight her personal student in the first place, was because after seeing her performance in her entrance exam, she became convinced that Twilight might eventually be able to complete the ascension spell, and - in her warped view - came to see her as a potential threat to her whole worldview that needed to be forced into compliance with it. To that end, she intended to set Twilight up to complete the spell, but only after first either making sure Twilight was worthy, or forcing her to become worthy (and completely compliant to Celestia and, by extension, her worldview regarding ascension) so that the spell didn't fall into the "wrong" hands after completion. Celestia finishes by saying that while she's now ready to admit that she was wrong about almost everything, there's still one point that she holds to - that she believes that Twilight has the potential to finish the ascension spell. She states her intent to give Twilight the unfinished spell, and urges her to save ponykind from the curse of mortality in her stead. Luna notes that should Twilight succeed, it would cause massive political upheaval since the princesses' alicorn status would no longer work as a mandate to rule, and that the general populace won't be happy (as a massive understatement) when they hear about what Celestia's been doing - and more to the point, not doing - behind the scenes, but all three princesses agree that the cost is worth it, Celestia admitting that her reckoning is long overdue as it is. Twilight accepts the mission to complete the spell, and promises that whatever may happen to Equestria once it's complete, she will be there to help hold everything together. The mane six and Spike quickly declare that she won't be alone in that endeavor; they'll be with her every step of the way. It was together that they defeated every threat to Equestria, and together that they were able to face their flaws. It would be together that they would overcome their flaws and undo the damage they had done, and together that they would usher Equestria into a brighter future.

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That's all I've got for this idea. I'll be the first to admit that it isn't without issues - most notably that it's essentially a retcon with an in-universe explanation for why the retcon is happening. But as I've said before, as the show currently stands, I don't see any way to fix the setting without massive amounts of bloodshed. A retcon of some sort is needed to avoid going into grimdark territory, and I figured that Discord giving up after he had already won in Keep Calm and Flutter On just because the plot demanded it was the perfect point to start the reboot from, given that it both had a way to go back to that moment in time and because it was far enough back that the issues in the first few seasons could actually be addressed. Another issue is one I've brought up several times both publicly and in private regarding other fixfics - namely, that it has a lot of talking about fixing issues, but little to no actually fixing them. The reason for that is because of how long it was going already. But I fully admit, it's not a true fix without either another story arc or two or some sequels. That's why I included the part about the mane six acknowledging that their recognizing their own flaws and sins isn't enough, and that they need to make amends - to at least acknowledge the problem. The third issue I can think of is that it doesn't cover all the show's issues**. For that I can only say that this story felt bloated enough to me as it was regarding everything it tried to address, and admit that, again, a couple sequels would probably be needed to set everything right. And there's probably other issues that I'm not seeing that someone else might pick up on. But I like to think that this covers all the major issues in an at least semi-believable way without getting too dark.

Anyway, that's all I've got. Again, I'm not going to be writing this story myself due to my own incompetence in writing, and I don't expect to see anyone else trying to pick this thread up, between my own obscurity and the one person following me having enough on his own plate with his own AU. Probably for the best, though. If anyone else were to pick it up, knowing the beliefs and attitudes of this fandom on the whole, anyone else picking it up would probably only do so to knock down a strawman representation of my positions, rather than to build on them.

And with that, I've got nothing else to say here.

*Well, currently anyway. Prior to defeating Nightmare Moon, her mistreatment of Spike would need to have a different cause - most likely her lack of concern for others in general at that time

**Biggest remaining issue for me being that apparently climate doesn't work without ponies micromanaging it and all the implications attached to that

Comments

[EchoWing]

Kind of a shame that this won't progress much from here. Just saying.