The Code Series - Emerald Flare, Code of Dissonance, and Unrealized Projects · 11:07am Sep 8th, 2021
Continuing with a longstanding desire to put old works to rest, this blogpost goes over the extremely scattered notes, ideas, basic plot threads and ideas that would have taken The Code's Apprentice stories to a 5 story... conclusion of sorts.
As before, please note that everything below represents a spoiler for stories that are - at this juncture - highly likely to never be finished, due to a combination of demands from real life, and a change in my creative priorities.
So, as before:
The Code stories were always a test-bed for original fiction. The magic systems, the general arc of the story, morality ideas, some of the side cast (Most of the Nightmare Court were all me trying to feel out 'antagonist' characters as allies for 'protaganists', especially The Baron and Blackedge.) were all me trying out things I'd wanted to really hone down before I tried writing them for original characters in fiction.
The Code of Dissonance was meant to be a companion story to Code of Harmony - followed up by "The Code of Dragons" starring Emerald Flare and ending with "The Code of Equestria", which was meant to wrap up the central story with Celestia, Twilight and Cadence, and not so much a giantic battle as it was a series of emotional conflicts, ending with something that ended with a reflection on what I felt were the broader themes of MLP Gen4 and a weird-ish dimensional plot point.
The story itself would show the events of the first three weeks after Twilight's ascension as seen by her, from her new ruling position in Canterlot. The story's central plot was to revolve around Twilight herself coming to realize all of the complexities of the world she was trying to change, and how her actions would cause greater problems beyond her immediate reach. The climax of the story is Twilight confronting an angry and powerful Sunset Shimmer, who returns to Equestria having gone through a redemption arc without Twilight's help (Ultimately destroying the Sirens and taking their magic gems), and now seeking to restore her teacher to power, as she knows nothing of Twilight's intentions or what has happened to Celestia. Twilight technically loses the fight (Sunset, at this moment, is hyper-charged on reclaimed magical energy that Twilight finds herself struggling to contain, and is emotionally wounded from what happened to Celestia at the end of Code of Harmony), but keeps Sunset from killing her thanks to intervention from The Mane 6, who Sunset identifies as the same as her own friends from Canterlot High.
"The Code of Dragons" was more roughly planned - Mostly intended to be a story that would reflect long periods of time between The Code of Harmony and the penultimate story, The Code of Equestria. This would star "Spike" as Emerald Flare, newly minted Unicorn Pony, as he 'grows up' in a rapidly changing world and Equestria. This was meant to be more an experiment in how I could write out the long term events of a time skip as a narrative in and of itself, moving ahead months (and near the end, several years) between major scenes. Instead of presenting as a singular narrative, it would've presented as Spike showing a world changing, but also how he himself both changed and did not change under the influence of the powerful magics of Harmony, as now envisioned by a mortal Tia Sunbeam.
The most major events of this story were to be a steady increase in Discord's power, mostly held off by the New Elements of Harmony and Dissonance, as events beyond Equestria begin spiraling out of control, leading to the release of new villains. (As time went on, these villains would become Tirek, The Sirens, and some other monsterous-bad-guy, but their plan was never much developed beyond They Be Bad Guys)
The climax of the story was Spike realizing that his long-held desire for a relationship with Rarity was, itself, never going to truly work out, and how the close family ties he'd once held with Twilight were drifting apart as more stress of ruling piled upon her, and him deciding to leave Canterlot behind to find a family of his own. This action ultimately sets off the events of the final story, as without Spike, Twilight would be far more unstable and unable to counteract Discord's magic.
This lead into the final part of the story - The Code of Equestria.
Little was ever written about this beyond broad strokes. Discord seeks to 'break' the Great Game between Fausticorn and Tantalus, and free the world from obvious control being wielded over Light and Dark. Twilight and the extended cast lead a war against Chaos-corrupted outsiders, which they 'win' - but only by technicality of having truly sealed away Discord. Twilight and Cadence, realizing their world was on the brink of destruction, would hatch a plan of madness to fully mix Dissonance and Harmony magic, and try to restore everything. With assists from much of the major cast and a bunch of emotional moments, they do so, but the spell itself turns out to simply be capable of rewinding time, flying in the face of all logic. The Impossible Spell breaks Time and Space, and more critically, breaks the power of Harmony and Dissonance entirely.
Twilight awakens from casting the spell, many months before she ever goes to Ponyville, in a world where there is no Magic of Harmony or Dissonance. Only the Magic of Friendship. Her memories of those days, of all those years, are fuzzy at best and distant and dreamlike at worst. Twilight holds a long conversation with Celestia, talking about both terror and grief, as though she has lost something totally profound, but cannot place what it is.
Celestia, however, has full memories of those events and time, as her core of being - her Alicorn spark - was being held outside of Time and Space in the Astral Plane at the time everything went bananas. This was the final ploy by Fausticorn to ensure the world would, one day, be as peaceful and whole as she hoped.
In a way, Discord has won, for Harmony and Dissonance are now just words, embodied only by Elements whose power is now somewhat diminished. But in another way, he has handed Celestia the full keys to all of his plans, giving her the one thing she'd never had before - the power to predict Discord's actions, to the point that she could counteract him and ultimately, reform him.
Celestia tucks the stressed out young filly back into bed, and promises her things will seem better in the morning. They have to be ready for The Summer Sun Festival, this year in Ponyville, and Twilight has classes in the morning. Celestia turns to the copious, endless notes that now foretell nearly every significant event yet to come in her world, from the exact date of Luna's return, to the arising of Sombra, to the invasion of the Changelings, and so on. In a world without the power of magic she used to crush the evils of the last one, Celestia now instead has the power of foreknowledge. Looking up at Nightmare's Moon, she vows that this time, she will do things the right way. The way they should have always been done. For Twilight. For Everyone.
The Codeverse had several other unrealized projects : Bloom - which was intended to be a followup to Rise for more Trixie shenanigans, and The Code Diaries, intended to be a more intimate look-in on critical characters of the series. Lastly, there was "The Code of Discord" - Intended, after the main series, to allow me to give a more broad overview of the world's mechanics and ideas, and to better explain any remaining loose-threads. Finally, as stated before, The Codeverse was a testbed to talk about how magic might work in this system, character relationships, side-character plots and ideas,
Someday, I hope to send you all a link to a newly completed "The Code's Apprentice" story - featuring all original worldbuilding, characters, and ideas. If you have any further questions on this series, I will be happy to answer them below.
Until that day, however,
I remain, as always, Humbly Yours.
Lapis-Lazuli
It all sounds so interesting
Thanks for posting this summary. It's a sad reality that all too many abandoned projects never receive such an end.
Got to admit that rollercoaster of a plot would have been amazing to read. I look forward to that link one day. But I guess now would be a good time to make two new shelves for my book shelf. Completed and Incomplete, yet done. The original code will have a special place of honor as the first one on the complete shelf
Nicely written, although I don’t know if we will ever see these events expanded ourselves. That also explains why Celestial took such a back role time 2. She didn’t want to personally act because she had already fallen
...sudenly im glad you never finished the code series, theres an unwriten rule among writers and animators and it goes as such
if you have to resort ot time travel to fix it, you fucked up, go back and try again...what your sugesting for the 'ending' there is an absolute and utter cop out, rather then finding a way to make things work with the world you had, you just hit the big red reboot button and start over, eraseing and rendering meaningless all the events from the previous stories...sooo yeah...if you ever do go back to that i would sugest SERIOUSLY reconsidering that.
5579851
I wasn't fixing anything. The ending was, in a sense, the point of the story.
The universe I built, ultimately, has to lead back to the original show universe. No matter what kind of narrative tricks or rethinking I do, I cannot build the universe I had built without referencing back to the original.
Without the MLP we all know from the show, my fanfiction doesn't exist.
And ultimately, the alternative universe Idea I created was always, inevitably, going to lead back to that universe, because of what it ultimately meant to me. The game I was playing - light, darkness, rethinking central characters and themes - is foundationally just the original story with extra bits tacked on.
Never was I trying to 'fix' a mistake. I did make some narrative mistakes (mostly I should've stopped at one story and moved on to other projects.) but the ending itself was where I wanted to go, to turn around and say "If I want to build my own universe, I cannot continue to build on the bones of other people's universes."
Loving these pieces of a greater stories