30 years old closet brony from the center of Europe. Just happily doing my thing in my corner of the internet.
A new creature appears in Ponyville, bringing a threat of total destruction with him. Everypony is ready to deal with that new enemy, but Twilight decides to protect it, jeopardizing the future of everypony in all of Equestria, and soon begins to have to face the consequences...
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Whoa.
That was way different than the draft you sent me. I didn't get a chance to read it fully as I am at work right now but... I have a feeling the moral arguments will be made more clearly. What that does to the reader and how they will think about it, I'm not sure. For example, sometimes it is better to leave some things unsaid and let them read between the lines. I have always enjoyed those kinds of stories more than ones that guide you by the hand and spoon feed you everything because I feel like the writer is challenging me to think and use my own senses of how things ought to be, thus making the story more enjoyable. On the other hand, if it's too vague then the subtitles can end up slipping through the cracks and present a story that is perceived to be weak, even though it might just be too complex for the individual reader to understand. Or the story could very well just be weak... who really knows anymore?
Either way I'm glad to see that you decided to publish. So... how is Lyra going if you don't mind me asking.
Also, thanks for the props in the notes... almost didn't get to see it.
I understand. Here I had pretty much no choice.
Because I would have personnally killed the creature probably at the very beginning. And I have a lot of difficulty to understand those who would have decided to keep it alive. I highly respect them, and I know they would be right, and I wish I could believe like they do, but I'm actually more driven by fear...
So I had to make the best case I could to keep the creature alive in order for it to make some sort of sense to me.
Does that make me a bad guy? Probably. By chance I'll never have to decide something like that. (I hope)
I just found out a major flaw in the whole concept... I think I understood why people are so repulsed by cloppers. And I have to admit it is a very good irrational reason.
So I have to adapt the story to it if it is possible and if I am able to. The problem lies more with the second part.
I kind of think I whould stop there, but now I feel the need not only to try and finish Lyra's story, but also to write another last one, one that would actually be the very optimistic, simple and heartwarming story I wanted to write back at the beginning.
Well, I'll see. After all, I'm going to do what I'll feel like doing. Pretty much always have and pretty much always will.
By the way ^^:
Well, I had to rewrite it all following mostly your comments and my own feelings.
Well, that was different and dark... and I liked it! The story's good with a few hiccups here and there (like how some of the ponies acted so easy to kill a creature), and I can ignore the problems.
-WS
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Sorry for the long answer...
They... kind of acted the way I would have acted (and how I thought anybody would think they should act in those circumstances, from my observation of politic, for example the concept of preemptive strike, the will to possess a gun and the way we speak about criminals... mostly).
I tried to present two reasons for them to act that way in the story:
- they feel threatened by it, on an instinctive level (even without the threat itself)
- they are more driven by the fear for others (ponies being pretty concerned about each other) than by the fear for themselves.
The first point, I tried to present with a structure:
1) nature tells the creature is dangerous: the animals (who act on instinct by definition) want to kill it blindly
2) the ponies tell the creature is dangerous: the ponies (who don't act on instinct) feel some fear from the creature, even Twilight (who the reader should be identifying with and who is considered highly civilized)
3) the narrator tell the creature is dangerous: the eyes of the creature reveal its evil nature (my way to try and tell the reader: "he may look like a fawn, but he really is dangerous, you should at least doubt he is a good guy")
I hoped that, with that sort of manipulation, I would be able to make the feeling of the ponies pass to the reader. It would have been easier if the fawn had been a spider I guess (using our prejudice against those), but I wanted to use the symbolic of the roe-deer.
Maybe it didn't work just because you wouldn't hurt something or someone who you perceive as a threat if you had the opportunity. In which case, as I said, I kind of envy you.
I'm glad you could enjoy reading it.
That didn't end as expected... Or, maybe it kind of did, but, with that end quote, that was very nicely done.
I'm not exactly sure how to react to this one. The creature, only described as a 'world destroyer', is very vague. Might this be some reference/deeper meaning that I'm missing [again]?
Throughout the fic, I can say that how the ponies reacted kind of put me off a bit. What I mean is, in a land that's very peaceful in general, ponies find a new creature that have done nothing, and yet act very hostile.
Then again, thinking it over a bit, if something presented itself as a "world destroyer", and actually had the means to do that (magical world and stuff), I'm pretty sure the loud mass would have it gone as soon as possible.
I kinda thought about the mutual feeling of hatred towards the creature, from both animals and ponies, a little. This is kind of based on another fic I just (re-)read, where there's Harmony in everything that exists in Equestria. Anything rubbing that Harmony is attacked, or targeted as evil, and therefor, all living creatures are driven to vanquish it. My 'headcanon', if that can be used for a fic, here was that this creature was threatening the Harmony of Equestria, and so the entire world more or less made it disappear.
In the end, I enjoyed reading this. It was a little thought-provoking analyzing what this creature could be, how it could do what it said, and where it came from. I can really see Twilight protecting it by using logic, that noone is evil until an evil act is performed. I might have a bit hard time seeing Twilights friends go against her like that, but, when even the Pricesses had the same thought-setting, I guess they had their reasons to question Twilight.
And again, with that end quote on top of it all, just, take my like and fave!
M
Also, a minor misdirection:
- Dialogue spoken by
[Saw it and thought I could mention it, it should be unicorn, not alicorn :) ]
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I hesitated a long time before tagging this story as a tragedy...
At the very beginning, I wanted to have Twilight decide she wouldn't accept to just give up and use all of her magic to come back in time and change the outcome of the story by...
Well, basically by giving up her title as a princess, make a law that says it would be murder to kill the creature and, after years of work and with the help of the other princesses, free the world destroyer of his destiny, saving him and Equestria both.
I guess I just gave up in her place...
The creature represent everything we usually see as a threat. Other countries we think will attack us in the long run, criminals, different cultures we don't understand, strangers, immigrants and the idea of change at some point (because change means you have to destroy what exists to build something new, the same way a new technology can destroy the job of a lot of people, but still improves the life of most of the population).
I wanted to name the creature "Spec" or "Spei" for the latin of "hope", but it was to close to "Spike". And "Spencer" isn't a name I really like... so I decided I wouldn't name it at all.
It was supposed to be a roe-deer, but those seem to only exist in Europe and I was concerned the name wouldn't be clear for americans. So I made it a fawn. Because of the symbolic of innocence.
I didn't describe it more because I simply miss the vocabulary to do so...
I'm actually quite relieved to see that as the principal comment. All the way through, I was worried nobody would understand why Twilight is protecting the creature. So this is a very interesting reaction.
My idea was that those creature would appear at random in the different existing worlds with the purpose of ending them. But the world would try to protect itself and use everything it had to protect itself. So yeah, it's pretty much along the lines of your theory.
What was the title of the other fic? Looks interesting.
Well, it was Equestria against the life of one creature... difficult to accept to sacrifice the whole world for a question of principle.
Oups... yes, it was supposed to be "unicorn"
Thanks for giving me your mind. As said, I'm both surprised and very relieved to see how people seem to so easily take side for the creature here (against all logic). It may be because I went too far to manipulate them against it, but I like to believe you're just way better than I am.
I didn't really mean that because of the tag, eventhough in hindsight, that makes sense. [I actually didn't check the tags
]
What I meant was, that I was first hoping for a kind of positive resolution of some kind, but then what happenend, happened. Now I was expecting the story to end on a 'simply' sad note, with Twilight in endless grief or something. But that changed again, and it ended as bittersweet, especially with that quote. It could have been much more sad, but Twilight was able to accept what happened, kind of, and that ending I really approved of.
The other storyline you've mentioned, that's another story. And, this one is great too, just different. If you ever get to write that other storyline, even with another creature or threat, I'd probably read that too.
(This got long, sorry ^^')
This might be because of my not-very-overactive-imagination, but, I don't see the threat as realistic [in our world], and therefor it's a creature that should deserve mercy. If you want to drag a creature like that into our world, my first thought was a preacher standing in some random square and screaming that he'd destroy the world. Barely anyone would listen very much.
But if we change the scenario a little from what I imagined when writing that first post. Change the preacher into some armed government, that turns out to be controlled by a creature of the sort, the threat gets more realistic. Depending on which country and where, people would react, and probably harshly.
This is what I mean that it had the means to do what it claimed. In the world of Equestria, anything can happen, because of every creature having some connection to magic (in some 'theories' at least). So the latter mentioned scenario applies, it is 'armed', and should be considered as a threat.
But, then that changes again, the creature says it doesn't have a choice, that it's forced to do what it wants, and seems sincere enough to win Twilight over. It doesn't do anything like an evil beeing would do during it's time with Twi', it's just happy and content.
Here's the part that I didn't really see happening. Even if the ponies were terrified of Nightmare Moon, they accepted that she'd changed back, and befriended her. They were terrified of Discord, who once was ruining their world, but he got reformed, and so far we haven't seen no more menitions of him. Now this creature, already pitiful and sad, is targeted, attacked and hated with not much more reason than a gut feeling. And noone, not one single soul, except maybe Celestia, stands to listen to Twilight, to argue against that feeling.
...It makes sense though, especially if we add the worlds as entities that are trying to defend themselves.
Look, I've lost what I was going at in this text. I was trying to disprove you saying "against all logic". I'm all for peaceful solutions as far as they are available, and depending on which side of the extremes we were, I'd keep onto that thought. But as I dug myself further into this comment, I realised that what you portrayed might not have been the absolutely most in-character reaction for the fantasy world called Equestria, but it's a very good parallell to our world.
] have been shown to have world-altering powers, and therefor they could have had a chance to spare this creature. If the same threat would be put against us, and had some strength to back their words up, the answer would probably quickly be some kind of arms.
The difference for Equestria, as far as I see, is that magic [or friendship
Another discussion would be which kind of world was to be destroyed, was it really Equestria, or was it the world Twilight had built around herself, her world? But I won't devolve into that now.
I've kind of written for too long, and have to get stuff done, heh.
It's called The Ash. It has a lot of sub-stories, or maybe I should call them different adventures. Simply, there's a lot going on in it, at once, because the world is changing rapidly. I may or may not have spoiled part of it by discussing the Harmony from this viewpoint. But how Harmony is handled is an integral part of the fic, especially towards the end... And I will say no more, heh.
In the end. No.
I'm not. Don't say that.
I think higher of Equestria, as far as peaceful solutions go. But, as you saw in my spiraling ramble above, I think I got your point, and agreed with it. It's kind of hard to comprehend a world-threatening threat, and how to react for such, needs a lot more of backthought and details. And it's still just ideas. It depends on how seriously the threat is taken.
And this is now ridicolously long, and just agrees with what you've said.
I deja vú'ed a little.
Oh well.
I'll stop writing now.
M
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That makes more sense
.
And I didn't even think of that... you're right. It would have needed almost a whole paragraph or chapter to make the concept take a concrete allure.
Then I'll discover it by myself, after... 120'000 words?!? Alright...
I won't drag you into it either, because, to be honest, I never found the time to really develop that second degree reading of the story... so it ended up being just one cheap shot at the end.
So will I to keep my answer as short as possible
.
3419999
I thought they were going to use the elements to turn him into a normal fawn
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Actually, they probably should have used those elements on themselves in that story... To be honest, I can't remember why I didn't use them. Probably because of the fear of the "deus ex machina", but now that I think about it, it would make some sort of sense, with enough work beforehand.
Still, I prefer the moral of that ending, mostly the last talk with Rainbow Dash.