The Lone Princess

Hazy Answer #1 · May 25th, 2013 · · ·

That was amazingly well written. I think you've got Celestia's character down perfectly, and I firmly believe this deserves to be featured. Congratulations.

Twippledash

Twippledash #2 · May 25th, 2013 · · ·

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2628207 Thank you!
I wish it would get featured, too (obviously). Good to see I managed to portray her well in character.

This was my first attempt to write a full story in first person, and apparently it was at least a decent success. Though I think it is too early to say anything definite yet, as this story has been out for just about 4 hours by the time I'm writing this.

Bronzedragon

Bronzedragon #3 · May 25th, 2013 · · ·

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I agree this is very well written and deserves to be featured. Found one Murphy generated error. In the ten year section where Twilight is leaving Celestias bedroom you have
(Once Twilight wad gone,) I know you meant [was]. However Murphy moved your finger one over one key.

Twippledash

Twippledash #4 · May 25th, 2013 · · ·

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2628394 And now I moved my cursor over the edit button and fixed that. Thanks for the notice.

Princess Glitzy

Princess Glitzy #5 · May 25th, 2013 · · ·

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Loved the story. Surprisingly, I didn`t cry though.

Knight of the Raven

Knight of the Raven #6 · May 27th, 2013 · · ·

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That was a marvelous little story... alright, it was not actually little but it was still excellent. It was well written. I must say I was slightly surprised Celestia didn't feel like she was using the bearers of the Elements like tools to save her sister, but she has already hurt enough, no need to add more pain and guilt.

I liked the little parts like the logic between the Elements and Nightmare Moon's banishment, the population debating the origins of Nightmare Moon (with Celestia stubbornly refusing one of the theories), Celestia keeping the Equestrian flag as it is, ponies celebrating the night only after Luna left... the last one must have hurt Celestia a lot.

Also, ponies are ungrateful jerks if they'd riot against Celestia for taking one day of vacation.

One of the narrative parts I liked most was the easy flow from one Element bearer to another. Honest Applejack who could have been also Loyalty if not for Rainbow Dash, who proved her own loyalty for her friend Fluttershy, who's a friend of Rarity... Smooth flow.

The sentence 'The other five would act more or less like fuel cells to power up the harmony wave' really made me laugh, reading the Elements presented in such a mundane way was really amusing.

'“You won’t get away with this, Nightmare Moon!”' felt cliche though.

There were other lines I liked;

'Tonight I would do some research on the Elements of Harmony, to find out some way—any way—to help my little sister,'

'Even if I knew my sister would return eventually, as far as the next thousand years were concerned, she could as well have been dead,'

'That didn’t mean I would forget about her though, not even after hundreds of years. No, I would make sure that was never going to happen,'

'I closed my eyes, trying to reason that it wasn’t my fault, but Nightmare Moon’s. But no matter how I looked at it, I couldn’t deny the fact that I was the one using the Elements of Harmony against her. I didn’t even know if she would be able to forgive me once she’d get back, after those hundreds of years,'

'I had never before felt so lonely during the millennia I had lived. I didn’t have anypony in the whole Equestria whom I could talk with as an equal; Luna had been my only living relative, only pony seeing me as who I really was...

And the only pony who I could call a friend,'

'Even I felt my memories of her fading,' which must be one of the most painful effects of time,

'That meant another eternity to wait,'

'I wished my sister was here with me,'

'And, even if she herself didn’t know it yet, those five stars around the larger purple star on her cutie mark could possibly reflect the other five Elements of Harmony,'

'My smiles had become quite sparse since my sister was banished, but there were still some things that made me put a genuine smile on my face. And one of those things was my faithful student, Twilight Sparkle,'

'I knew there was nopony else around to hear me, but hearing somepony talk reassuringly, even if it was just myself, helped me to stay calm. “You have done well so far Twilight Sparkle, and I have full confidence in your success,”'

'Might as well make a spectacular entrance...'

'This was it—the moment I had waited for a thousand years,'

'The next few seconds were the longest ones I had ever lived. I waited for her to respond, hoping from the bottom of my heart that she would accept my apology. I didn’t want to even think about the alternative, having been waiting for our reunion for a thousand years. I was holding my breath, and the only thing that existed in my consciousness at that moment was my sister Luna, hunkering in front of me,'

'But I could never completely forgive myself, and I would continue this tradition of mine on the following years too, in memory of one of my greatest mistakes'

and the finale

'As I once again looked up at the now silhouetteless moon, I shed some tears; just like I did every year on this very night over the last thousand years.

But there was one thing fundamentally different from all the other times.

This time those were happy tears.'

I found a few mistakes;

'The Elements of Harmony had, by a wide margin, the most powerful magic know(n) to exist in the whole world'

and

'and would once again accept her rightful place as the co-ruler of Equest(r)ia.'

The Protect Celestia group should be happy to include your story, for what it's worth.

Twippledash

Twippledash #7 · May 27th, 2013 · · ·

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2638013 Wow... didn't expect such a long comment to pop up out of nowhere (even if most of it was just quotes from the story).

Also, ponies are ungrateful jerks if they'd riot against Celestia for taking one day of vacation.

Well, she did kinda control both the sun and the moon, so taking a vacation (at least from those tasks) would have probably risen some unrest... Maybe not really revolting, but that was just Celestia's speculations.

'“You won’t get away with this, Nightmare Moon!”' felt cliche though.

Yeah, I agree with that. But everyone can say a cliched line now and then, right? And Celestia actually said almost the same thing to Discord in S2E1, so she could as well have said it to Nightmare Moon too.

I found a few mistakes;
'The Elements of Harmony had, by a wide margin, the most powerful magic know(n) to exist in the whole world'
and
'and would once again accept her rightful place as the co-ruler of Equest(r)ia.'

Both fixed now. Thanks for the notice.

The Protect Celestia group should be happy to include your story, for what it's worth.

Well, I have not joined that group, but I'll see if I'm going to join later and add this story into it. I don't mind getting more publicity for this, so you or anyone else can also add this.

Thank you for kind feedback. I'm glad you liked the story.

Lady Grey

Lady Grey #8 · Jul 27th, 2013 · · ·

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I found this to be too long for what it accomplished. The voice was nice and there were a couple of good ideas I guess, but I didn't really see much added to what can be surmised from the show.
My favorite part was the timeline across the ages, and really I think they story should have focused on that more. The rehashing of the series pilot was pretty much pointless to me.
That sounded pretty harsh I guess but this was really not terrible. It just could have been rethought a bit into something better, I feel.

Twippledash

Twippledash #9 · Jul 27th, 2013 · · ·

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2945886
I didn't think rehashing that one scene from pilot episodes was pointless—the story was mostly about Celestia's feelings about the banishment, and I felt it needed the scene of Luna's return to be complete (I assume you meant that particular scene?). Besides, even if the scene was straight from the show, it still conveyed Celestia's thoughts, which the show didn't do. I could have probably cut a bit from it, but I myself didn't think it was too long to include as a whole.

About focusing more on the timeline during the banishment, I agree. But I admit I ran out of ideas quite quickly, and adding more to that could have easily caused a repetitive story, which would have been not good. I actually cut some repetition out of the story before publishing it here.

And don't worry about sounding harsh; that kind of comment is actually a lot more helpful than just "Great story!" or "It was good, but could have been better." comments.

ShadowWing09

ShadowWing09 #10 · Nov 2nd, 2013 · · ·

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Excellently done, I think the Celestia bashers should definitely read this one and look at Celestia's side of the story for once.

SLIGHTLY disappointed that there wasn't a bit more attention paid to Twilight's worth as the Element of Magic and no mention of Spike, but this is perfectly understandable as neither of those is the focus of the story. What WAS the focus was very gripping and solidly written.

Twippledash

Twippledash #11 · Nov 2nd, 2013 · · ·

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3433152
Thank you

I had a mention about Spike in one of the early drafts, but for some reason I cut it out from the published version—can't remember exactly why, but iirc it just felt somehow out of place, abruptly jumping from a subject to another. As for including more Twilight, it wasn't really the focus of this story like you said already, and I felt this story was already long enough for a one-shot. It could possibly make for a good spin-off story or something, but at least at the moment I'm not planning to write more about it.

CrimsonBlitz66