Twilight's friends may not be immortal like her, but she's not going to let a stupid little thing like death get in the way of friendship. Now the ruler of Equestria, Princess Twilight Sparkle discovers the truth of life after death: More life. Armed with this new knowledge, Twilight ventures from Canterlot Castle to find and befriend the reincarnations of her oldest friends, whether they like it or not.
Image used with permission of Heavens and Asteri
Feature box story of December 27, 2013. Thanks, everyone!
Chapters (2)
So basically, Twilight has made a way for people to remember past lives?
See there is one flaw. Sometimes in the stories like this, Twilight tends to put her friends(who are dead) ahead of ponies who are alive right now(future). I've always found that trope odd. It's as if Twilight doesn't have the emotional maturity to move on.
3684035 Losing people you love leaves scars that never go away. Fiction is full of examples of characters who have a hard time letting go. I can see Twilight doing this.
Overthinker: I know you mentioned wanting this to stand as it is, but...I see potential to continue this. I'd really like to see more of this one. Do consider pressing forward with this.
I would of said pinkie pie...
Okay, checked the tag again to make sure it's comedy; I quite like
where this is going at the moment - though I am not yet sure how
you want to fully marry such a dark topic with comedy. Remember
that fridge horror doesn't care for genre tags.
That said, I can surely see Twilight never getting past losing her best
friends. When you are as asocial as she was and in a position as she
now is in, your friends tend to be as close as family; and losing
family always hurts.
With kind regards,
Ranma-sensei
You have my curiosity.
To the read-later list!
Edit: screw it, I'm reading now.
Edit edit: HOLY CELESTIA, you have an OC called Valencia Orange as well!
...erm, as for the story, nicely done. You have my attention. But seriously, I'm a bit freaked out...
I like how this is going. I bet we have a real piece of gold here if you continue this story.
Keep it up!
Nice! I'm glad to see a topic like this with the [Comedy] tag, it's nice to know that it's not going to turn into some sort of grim downer with Twilight trying to remake her dead friends out of living ponies or somesuch. :)
3684035
Twilight Sparkle wouldn't be ruler of Equestria if she hadn't emotionally matured some over the [REDACTED] years since the series.
She got over the miserable sadness reaction ages ago. I have no interest in exploring that because I heard that there's a story somewhere on FIM Fiction where Twilight's friends die of old age, and Twilight becomes sad. Maybe even two stories. Those have probably explored that topic thoroughly enough.
I didn't understand at first.
or maybe I still don't.... so one quick question:
is Valencia Orange a reincarnation of Snips - or did Snips had a sex change and forcefully forgot about his past life?
stupid question. but when I read the last line, I was like '... wtf? snips is a chick now?'
good read nonetheless!
3684453
The former. Snips would be long, long dead by now.
This is quite interesting... Snips was destined for eternal damnation...
Ok so this is about reincarnation, nice. Ever since I saw the movie Cloud Atlas, anything involving past lives has become a personal favorite of mine. If you haven't seen that movie, I highly recommend it, it could inspire you for this fic, if you're planning a story where Twilight attempts to bring her old friends back to life
One thing I don't understand though is the whole passage about Twilight not being Princess Twilight. Could you clarify that for me?
Nice story overall :)
Oh lookie dare, feature box ahoy.
Odd how that seems to happen with stories I take an interest in.
Imagine if Princess Celestia tried to publish a paper. Can you imagine the scientific community rejecting it? Would they provide feedback on possible errors in it? Would they question the conclusions, or accept them blindly? How much damage could it then do if she turned out to be wrong, if the rest of the world can't conceive of that notion? And would Celestia herself learn anything from the endeavor if nopony challenged her?
(This is also the motivation behind blind review processes, though those only work insofar as authors don't have sufficiently distinctive styles and academic subjects to uniquely identify their work even without a name.)
Twilight's way of heading off that problem is to construct a little fiction that her peers are willing to accept, so that she can participate in the scientific community on the same terms as everyone else: on the strength of her ideas and evidence, nothing more, nothing less.
Oooo.
This looks like it'll be a fun one.
Got my interest.
~Skeeter The Lurker
Hmmm....
s6.postimg.org/5ul2jmext/continue_Monkey.jpg
oh god
I thought we were free from he and Snail's rain of terror
3684943
What fferror said in post 3685134
Twilight Sparkle as a character, here, is older than the one in the show. Much older. She's a fully matured and self-actualized pony, and as a person who loves research and learning, it only seems natural that she'd become a professional researcher and write papers for peer review. However, doing so would produce a conflict of interest with the other job that'd come naturally to her: Succeeding Princess Celestia as ruler of Equestria.
The whole point of academic peer review is to be proven wrong. You spend years researching something, put loads more time into presenting it, and then throw it out to the sharks to be torn apart for errors in methodology and conclusions.
This become a problem when the researcher throwing their baby into shark-infested waters happens to be Queen of the Sharks. Suddenly, the sharks are afraid to really question the report for errors. Are you going to tell the Shark Queen that she's wrong when she's capable of launching you into the sun, even if you know she won't? Even if you don't see anything wrong, is there really nothing wrong, or is your respect for the Shark Queen going to blind you to the possibility of errors?
That's the reason why Twilight's constructed another legal identity. It's a layer of psychological protection for her not-actually-peers. It's also why she does such an obviously poor job of supporting that legal fiction. If she's getting up in front of them and telling them a blatantly obvious lie about not being the princess, and instead just being some unicorn researcher that looks the same and has the same name, they're going to be in the mood to call her out on something.
When one "Twilight Sparkle" gets too old (or it's convenient for tax purposes), she gets killed off on paper, and another "Twilight Sparkle" comes out of nowhere and continues the research of the old one.
I just want to say that I loved the bit with that legally a different Twilight Sparkle is doing all the academic work.
It is perfectly logical, practical and make no practical sense whatsoever except from a legal point of view. It really felt like Twilight's solution to a problem only she thought was worth addressing.
Congrats on the feature box! Great story, can't wait for more.
Whoa. Featured? That's unexpected! Thank you, everyone!
Well now, this should be fun.
3684440 Maybe even 200 that have all done the exact same things and ended the exact same way and earned the same 'feels' comments from the same four or five idiots.
The past lives thing reminds of the Assassin Creed series, but this seems closer to how Aeon Flux worked.
continueee
*clops hooves in anticipation*
fuuka.warosu.org/data/tg/img/0270/96/1378629710029.jpg
I used to be intrigued, now you have my attention
Hrmm, I've seen this plot before, usually pops up in fandoms with immortal or long-lived characters. Most of the stories I've seen usually play the reincarnation angle for the drama, or go running head first into creepy dark body-horror town, so I'll admit I'm interested to see this concept applied as a comedy. It's a bit early to tell, but so far you've got a solid start, bringing in Snip's reincarnation right off the bat, and the whole legal identity gag are a good setup for keeping this whole thing light-hearted and fun, doesn't mean there can't be any drama, but you have an interesting future Twilight who doesn't seem to be angsting over her friend's deaths, like I've seen in so many other fics.
Like Seether said at the very beginning of the comments, reincarnation and restoring previous lives memories is really easy to drop a story straight into creepy town, with the old life overriding the current one. Sometimes this gets done on accident, when an author tries to pass off the total destruction of the reincarnated character's current memories and life with barely a paragraph or a reaction from other characters, it starts to look really dark, as it seems as if the current timeline character is possessed or controlled by their past self, rather than being an independent entity with their own experiences and memories before remembering their past life.
Like I said though, it's still too early to tell where you're going with this, I'm imagining a funny story about Twilight attempting to hunt down the reincarnations of her friends and finding out just how similar or different they are from their past selves, then getting into comedic situations as she gives them their past life memories while simultaneously trying to make friends with their current selves. Ultimately, ending up with her learning to appreciate her friends current incarnations, while they get into awkward situations that inevitably result when the ruler of an entire country, and immortal super powerful icon walks up to random common ponies and proclaims that they totally used to be best friends in a past life so now they should hang out again. I could be totally off though, there's a lot of different directions you could take a story like this just from the first chapter.
You have my attention with this.
3686661
Those four or five then went back and reread "My Little Dashie" for the 87th time, crying all the while.
"Your name?"
"Prince Rodriguez Valquez del Volus the Third, second in line for the Sea Pony Throne and Slayer of Jörmungandr - peasant."
"Please drink this. ... your name again?"
"Iron Will! If the gloves don't fit, I freakin' quit."
"Please stop splashing Mr. Will, you'll get our recording instruments wet."
Well THAT blew my mind.
Liked, favorited, keeping an eye on this.
Can someone explain what just happened in plain, simple terms?
Kind of reminds me of another recent fic, Alpha Centauri, where ponies keep reincarnating until they ascend to become stars (like Celestia) after accumulating enough energy.
I'm going to guess you mean "at my age"
3689276
Her spell can make ponies remember the past more clearly and remember their past lives.
3685776 Princesses pay taxes?
3689425 Ok, awesome thanks. I get it now.
3689391
Yes. Yes, I did. I'll go fix that right up!
Some may find it strange that i favorite so little but this has really caught my eye.
Amazing. You would almost be able to pinpoint the EXACT moment when Twilight Sparkle begins on the road to frothing at the mouth with anger, if it didn't occur about five seconds after the chapter ends. At least assuming she was expecting this to be one of her friends.
3689431
I hadn't really decided if Princess Twilight Sparkle pays taxes, but Professor Twilight Sparkle does. She's totally not a princess.
3689532
3689532
As someone who is in university, and going to pursue legal education in a short while, I have to say that seeing an author put in such a humorous jab at high-level intellectual and academic pursuits with what Twilight did, and to have it be working on a number of levels, fills my heart with mirth.
Upvoted, favorited, followed, and hoping you develop this idea a little bit further.
Nice build-up, spinning into a completely unexpected ending!
Genius!
Good ideas, good humor, great twist (wonder if we see 
again, too) and really good story premise. So Twily seeks to reunite with her old friends. I wonder who she digs up along the way.
Holy... I was expecting her to say Applejack...
But Snips?! This changes everything!
3685776
I'm totally going to use that line out of context and wait for the reaction.
soo this twilight is a clone and the real twilight rules equestria
how long after season 3 is this story?? 100 years??
Hah! Reincarnation's the best.
I wonder who the griffon is?