Starlight Glimmer emerges from hiding with a mob of fiery new followers, loudly proclaiming one demand:
Free and equal elections for the office of princess.
Princess Celestia is a fair ruler, and consents to follow the will of the masses. To Applejack and Apple Bloom, it seems impossible Starlight will win. She's a dark horse candidate, all the way. But if her followers turn out to be more numerous than previously thought, the Apple family may have to reconsider what they'll do should the unthinkable happen and Starlight Glimmer becomes the new princess of Equestria.
Written for the Equestria Daily training grounds for "The Cutie Map". Thematically a sequel to No Pony Left Behind, but it's not necessary to read that one.
Chapters (1)
Yeah, I used the same cover pic for this one that I used for the last one.
So sue me, I was on a deadline.
Also, I know this was a real hatchet job, to fit it into the 7000 word maximum. I'll post the full version later.
Like the last one, I don't think I'll go so far as to Favourite it, but I shall upvote it.
You seem to be very good at doing this sort of depressing world, you know. :)
5983746
I, uh, don't know where I pick this stuff up from.
Oh, one thing I forgot to say before, though: Where exactly is Luna in all of this?
5985004
With Celestia and Cadence and Twilight; that is to say, somewhere else. Probably retired.
5985030
Ah, thanks.
You think Starlight will "make an example" of Flim, Flam, Diamond Tiara, Silver Spoon, etc, as a symbol of the evils cutie marks bring, and remove THEIR cutie marks to the cheers and approve of the crowd to get the people on her side. (IE, like Amon did, taking away the bending of mobsters).
First, Filth Rich is friends with the Apples.
Second, Starlight is more likely to demonize "big business" as much as she's demonizing "big government" because her mentality is to ENFORCE equality, to the point where everyone has to do just as well as everyone else, no better or worse, otherwise it wouldn't be fair.
She'd KNOW that getting people to hate "big businesses" would be easy pickings, and since she sees herself as the agent of True Friendship, she has every reason to appeal to the many who have more votes than the fewer who have more cash.
6011885
Filthy Rich does business with the Apples; nothing in the show indicates they're friends.
And -- assuming for a moment that I'm not just insinuating Starlight is a complete and utter charlatan -- its proponents have long treated the unfettered free market as a system that enforces equality. The "invisible hand," and all that. It's not for nothing that the US Declaration of Independence says, "All men are created equal".
6012069
Staright's attitude wasn't of someone who was in it just for the power. What scares me more than anything is how many people can't seem to comprehend the idea of Starlight Glimmer being a zealot.
And your argument of the free market being actually fair is one thing. But all Starlight would see is a few privileged, opposed to those who got there with hard work. It's the same of how she sees cutie marks.
6012773
She might be a zealot, she might not be. I hedged my bets, because she's probably going to reappear.
The first thing any supporter of Big Business ever says, ever, is that the privileged got where they are because of hard work. Their whole opposition to government intervention is that it assists people who do not work hard, and is thusly unequal.
6012993
There's a big difference between equal and fair.
6013025
Not to them, there isn't. Remember, this stuff is all an outgrowth of anti-monarchism. It started as a deliberate revolt against the aristocracy and "natural superiors".
Probably not worth commenting but damn this sent chills up my spine. Wondering where the princesses are during all this, probably waiting for the windigo's to freeze everything again. There's probably a story in their somewhere, maybe it's cyclic. The princesses usher in prosperity and safety, then along comes a Starlight/Sombra and subverts the status quo. Princesses leave because they can read the writing on the wall, windigo's start freezing everything, ponies band together and the princesses return.