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"At the end of the game, the King and the Pawn go back into the same box."
In the land of Equestria, there are no differences, no heartache, no progress, no purpose. There is just life, and whatever comes after. Everypony is equal. Starlight Glimmer won, but she may have also lost.
She built the box, but the game is about to end.
Entry for EquestriaDaily's Writer's Training Grounds.
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It's not a checkmate yet, Starlight.
Great story.
This is nice. Very emotional, and also very logical. Good stuff right here, good stuff.
"The game's not over yet."
Any time, any context where I hear that line, I get chills. For that, I will ignore all typos.
This was a good story.
Very well written! A nice exploration of the actual dystopia that occurs when everyone is exactly the same.
I've read a few Starlight stories before, but this one of the best. Congrats!
Good story. Only thing keeping it from being great is the length. You jumped straight from "You're going to regret this, Starlight" to "Oh snap I'm so regretful"
While a horrible long term idea, there must have been many short term positives for an equal society. I'd like to see the budding friendships and sense of being a part of a singular group, as well as the sense of, you talked to one pony, you've talked to them all, and especially a more gradual effect of "Oh snap, we can't get the sun down" as opposed to a couple sentences.
Although if you were going for something short and sweet, it all flowed very well and wrapped up nicely. Story is good quality, no doubt, good sentence structure, minimal grammar mistakes, good characterization; I'm just a sucker for them little details.
This would have been a more powerful ending than the TV show, though too dark, I suppose. It's the paradox of living. What makes us unique also makes us the same. One cannot live without the other. I really liked that metaphor you used, about the king and the pawn. It describes this scenario perfectly.
This was... wow. One of the best emotional stories I've ever read.
This was pretty good.
You can has review!
This is something I wish I'd found long ago because I fucking love this.
Good story.
Perhaps a little rushed?
Has Celestia knowingly and willfully killed everypony to teach Starlight a lesson? Uh oh.
8705216
They would have died anyways, celestia simply sped up the process
9001113
Umm, Dr. Hannibal Lecter (or any murderer really) could say that his victim would have died anyway of old age and he just sped up the process a tiny bit.
9001140
You're a fool.
Starlight made a world where ponied couldn't cook, grow food, treat illness or injuries, build shelters, or make clothing for winter, or even tend to weather to make winter or grow food, and by the time she realized that, everyone would have died of starvation, it would take too long to grow new food.
So celestia did them a favor by killing them faster.
9001497
Again, everybody is dying, and they even may (gasp!) stub their toe on furniture tomorrow. Why not fix this immediately in permanent fashion?
There's no indication those ponies wanted to die. You don't throw one more really big problem at people using "hey, they already have all these problems" as an excuse. You don't do this even if you don't like what those people are doing now. Even if there is an example of bad guy right before your eyes who is doing exactly that.
9002533
Again, you're a fool.
The situation was fixed, everypony is going to die slowly and painfully thanks to starlight, winter may knock off a few, then starvation a few more, then cannibalism a few more, then suicide kicks in and a few per day, until there isn't enough ponies to fix anything. Celestia did them a favor by killing them all at once, and created a new solution.
9002579
All the awesome things you're describing were pretty common part of life for significant part of human history and are common part of life nowadays in some hell-holes. Some humans endured.
Are you really advocating for mercy here or simply the existence of people living in much worse conditions than you insults your aesthetic taste so much that murder becomes preferable? Or was I right in the last sentence of my previous reply, and you think that in presence of Very Evil Starlight everyone receives free moral out-of-jail card for everything as long as they are "against" her? Please, provide more quantitative argument when it's ok to kill people, if it's nothing from above.
(And all of that speaking about just ponies and not mentioning all the non-pony races who never heard of Starlight that Celestia fucked up, by the way)
9002676
First off, this story is about the ponies affected, so fuck the other races, also for the record the yaks deserve it anyways.
Secondly, this is a fictional situation so who cares what humanity has done, this story isn't about humanity, its about ponies.
Thirdly, your a idiot, why you ask?
Because your trying to assume real world values to fictional magical ponies.
Fourth, if this was a story about humanity, then id say Celestia did a shitty job at killing all of us, she should have brought the sun down on the planet.
9002846
Ponies mentally are humans (maybe with a few tiny differences) --- that's why we can easily empathize with them. They experience joy, sadness, fear, disgust, anger, and surprise like us, and indicate those emotions with the same facial expressions (modulo ears of course). Even culturally they are very similar to us. Moreover, stories about ponies are written by humans and for humans to read (or watch in case of the show).
Values are not parametrized with "reality of the world", only with the mind who does assuming.
You probably have someone from this list: parents, children, siblings, cousins, more distant relatives, friends, coworkers. Heck, even yourself --- all covered by "humanity". Do you really prefer all of these folks being killed?
9003292
Seems were at an impass, you're still an idiot, and I'm going to let you be you and go do something constructive, because again, you trying to use real world values on a story about magic talking ponies, so good day sir.
9003369
Oh, for buck's sake! Why the heck would ponies have some special ethics that conveniently differs from regular in assuming that mass murder is ok?
9003404
9003369
Guys. It's a 3 year old one-shot. Who cares?
9003404
I know I was done, but this us just too idiotic to leave alone.
"The ponies" dont get to have special ethics, they are all equalized, starlight rules equestria and has equalized everyone but celestia, meaning the talents necessary to do any sort of commodities are gone, including the inherent magic needed to budge the sun and moon, or grow food, or know what's good and what's bad. This is starlight's equestria where freedom of choice is dead.
Now good day, hopefully this was enlightening, and the next reply shows you learned something, instead of being an echo chamber idiot.
9003480
They had that mechanism with Celestia before she self-destructed.
What?
You keep repeating the same thing. Yes, I've understood: you prefer killing ponies who have lives that shitty. And don't you dare to wiggle around by attributing your preferences to real or fictional worlds or situations: worlds and situations don't have brains and couldn't care about anything or have moral values. So the question was: what exactly criteria should be fulfilled to make you assume that mercy killing is ok? (You've endorsed Celestia's actions, but haven't endorsed killing those who stubbed their toe, so there should be something in between, right?) And, if you've brought up this one, the second question: why exactly does your ethics treat ponies, who are basically people, differently? (yeah, ponies have some weird stuff we don't have, like time travel and mind control, so some difference around those things are to be expected, but why different here?)
Granted, you advocated to wipe out yaks and humans for no reason recently, so question 1 may be meaningless, but I really hope that you were just angry and don't really hold those preferences.
9003440
imgs.xkcd.com/comics/duty_calls.png
Though, if you say that all this stuff is too annoying for you, I'll shut up.
9003440
Cuz apparently this guy read a different story, but if you want to, ill leave it alone.
Eh
I've always been fond of that quote.
I find the idea that the last future that Starlight was shown was the one in which she succeeded in her initial goal to be poetic justice wrought beautifully. This was a great AU idea, and I would say it was executed pretty well.
Although this was a bit rushed—Starlight seems to jump from triumph to regret to change far too quickly—I think there must have been some wordcount or time limitation when you wrote this initially, given that it was for EQD's Writer's Training Grounds. Even so, it's a very powerful piece. The atmosphere of despair and delusion through Starlight's eyes was done really well. The ending is somehow hopeful, even though I think it's strongly implied that her journey will be a fruitless one.
Kudos for writing this. Always nice to see more equality Starlight stories.