Twilight Sparkle took a nap after Season 9 ended, only to find herself back at the start of Season 1. Stuck going home the long way 'round, will she be able to keep the timeline she remembers intact, or will the butterfly effect bulldoze over everything she held dear before the reset?
Submitted for the approval of the Midnight Society, this is a story concept I originally was going to abandon until I got a mountain of positive feedback. Expect character tag changes as each chapter comes out. (And yes, the cover image is inspired by Groundhog Day.)
Featured April 20th - 22nd, 2018. 
Chapters (2)
Good so far
Interesting premise and no grammatical mistakes as of now.
Yes.
8875387
Yes? Yes!!
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Weird...
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I mean, I'm practically married to Grammarly at this point, so... no surprises there.
8875607
что за хрень ты несёшь?
Very nice! The concept isn't anything new, but the execution is wonderful and entertaining! It kind of reminds me of the style that they use with the Eternal Loops/Yggdrasil Loops story. But this is going to be much more linear and with a better focus. I love it, and I hope you continue this.
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Да? Да. Да!
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I mean it's nothing new but it is well written and fun to read.
Would continue to read if further chapters done.
Regardless of the talent of the author (which you've certainly shown), retelling the show with minor tweaks or fixes is rarely worth the effort, Its good that you put this to rest when you did,
Interesting take. I would like to see how this version of Twilight handles Too Many Pinkies, Lightning Dust and Trixie...hopefully positive for them this time.
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I agree, which is why when/if I continue this, I'm skipping to the parts that are massively different, with only references to the minor differences between vignettes/chapters.
I'd love it if you decided to continue this! I'm looking forward to seeing how everything plays out in this story.
Please continue this. The execution is really nice, and the premise, to my knowledge, is new.
The cruelest author: "I made this but I dunno this is it THE END... Or is it? Hey Vsauce, Micheal here and today we're talking about the cruelty of false hope"
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что
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I'm nothing if not a cruel tyrant.
I'm game for more, clean, crisp and who doesn't love fish out of water/time travel hijinks?
...Is it wrong to hope something like that happens to me? Probably... Though it would be so COOL!
Wait, you took the time to tailor the story so that each section had 380 words EXACTLY? Talk about attention to detail...
Got my attention. Continue this!
Continue it! Continue it!
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Eeyup! The first two sections ended up at or around 380, as did the fourth, so I just did some minor edits to make them all match up.
I do hope you continue this. It's a fascinating premise, Twilight going back and redoing everything, having already learned everything her life taught her the first time through. Even better, it doesn't seem like a bitter fixfic--instead of "this is how Twilight should have acted", it's "this is how Twilight would act if she already knew what was going to happen, what she was going to learn, and how to prevent at least part of the conflict". It's an entirely different set of challenges, with the possible added storyline of Twilight trying to find her way back to the Equestria she knows and the timeline she's familiar with. I would love to see this play out, though I'd certainly understand if this concept is too dead in your mind and you can't find a way to continue it.
I... hmmm... I'm rather curious to see what goes better and what goes wrong in new ways as well as any other butterfly effect stuff. If you continue it that is. This premise usually has a lot of frustration or bitterness from the author, but this feels crisp and more true to the characters as presented in the show. Gonna throw it in the tracking bin in case you do come back and throw some more good clean fun our way.
I could give you a emoji or something but this is good and you get this
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She seems a bit quick to enter "complete breakdown" mode, but this premise intrigues me, and I hope for/look forward to more.
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Agreed! I very rarely enjoy fixfics (since 99% of them are bitterness in a jar), but I thought the idea of a character being sent back to their own past with knowledge of the future was an interesting concept.
After all the positive feedback and the surprisingly large reception (20 upvotes in 6 hours???), I've started brainstorming about the rest of the story (from here to the epilogue). I've decided to have large sections of the show I skip. For example, I would skip most of Season 1, since that entire season boils down to either "it's mostly unchanged" or "it never happened because Twilight didn't need to learn the lesson". It just wouldn't be interesting to write down an episode with a few minor changes or write a chapter about how an episode failed to happen. I'll skip to the story beats that have major differences and/or major consequences down the line... Mostly two-parters, though also a number of single episodes and even some original material that is a direct result of the minor changes Twi makes (since you can't make a time-traveling omelet without breaking a few causality eggs).
8876218
That's entirely fair, I might bump up the "10 minutes" line to "an hour" or something to make it a bit more believable that she'd be in crazy mode.
EDIT: Doing exactly that right now. Also fixed a couple misspellings I somehow missed.
As Discord would say: “I’m going to need more popcorn!”
.....after reading chapter one I hope so. I also wonder how much you'll go over in detail as oppose to what you'll skim over......or if we get one heck of a retelling of G4.
Fun Fact, each segment is 380 words long exactly.
Fun Fact, 1896 (the total words according to Fimfiction) is not a multiple of 380. Just saying.
Fun Fact 2, Fimfiction's total word counter is a broken mess, so I actually believe you.
Popular and well-loved concept. It all comes down to the delivery. Writing is good so far. Looking forward to more.
8876380
Whoops! Turns out FiMFiction was right. That happened when I changed an extremely small detail earlier without thinking, my bad. Back to 1900!
Enjoyable, though the up-front reveal with Celestia struck me as off for these sorts of fics. Don’t get me wrong, I can see Twilight doing it, it’s just different.
This could be really interesting.
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Especially Dusty and Trixie. They deserved so much better.
Is Twilight lying here on purpose or is this suppose to be true? Because from the intro that Moondancer's party was that day, and Twilight wasn't sent to Ponyville until the next day.
Funny, I was remarking the other day that this concept doesn't show up much (if at all) in the pony fandom, whereas in the other larger fanfic fandoms (e.g. Naruto and Harry Potter) it's practically a genera in and of itself. The esteemed chaps I was discussing it with and I concurred that probably a good chunk is the arc vrs episode nature of the others verses pony, among others.
I am interested to see where you go with this.
8876107
How long did THAT take?
Either paradox is discovered or its ignored. Please continue this new time line as purple smart figures out what happens when changes infect the future.
Hmm. Well, this should be an interesting demonstration of the Butterfly Effect. Though in this case, it's more like an attack helicopter beating its rotors. Looking forward to seeong what comes of this. Oh, and great tie-in with "Celestial Advice;" I'd honestly forgotten that this was at the tail end of Celestia's personal turmoil.
Also:
"I think you covered him with the powerful unicorns out for revenge."
"Yeah, I guess."
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The episode always gave me the impression that Moondancer's party was shortly after Twilight left Canterlot, on the same day, and my fic reflects as much.
I love the concept, it's inspired by ground hog day, grate movie by the way, the rest in thst day. If you decide to keep looping that same day you should have her eventually say fuck it and go on this spree, like doing whatever she wants for a while then fall into depression, but then try and find a way out, maybe even try and intercept Tempist shadow.
Soooooo... basically Twilight can now avoid every single villain in the show and preemptively squish Chrysalis.
This should be fun.
No one cares, it's pointless to the description of the story. You should post it in a blog or in a relevant group, I can't read the description and get a feel for it when that's there, glaring at me to read it before I know more than the story title, I don't think I'm alone.
Coverart should reflect the story, I'm even more hesitant to read it because the image screams "Groundhogs Day" while you and the title say otherwise.
Is it really the entire show, or just the day?
Still tracking the story, though.
8876944
Who pissed in your Cheerios?
The guy's proud of his achievement and is displaying it to show that, there's nothing wrong with it regardless of the fact it somehow irritates you.
Dis gonna be gud
I hope Twilight tells Celestia (within ear shot of Discord hearing) that Discord mentioned how boring being a statue is, and explains he's fully conscious and goes on to say after almost 500 days, Celestia releases him. (gasp!) But eventually becomes somewhat more stable and (here Twilight lies) ends up marrying the Element of Kindness.
What's the point of time travel if you can't help your friends hook up!!
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That sounds like a great plan. Looking forward to it!
This right there had me worried. This made me think this was going to be one of those standard 08/15 "Oh, I'm in the past, let's just never tell anypony the truth and dance around the subject for 17 chapters" kinda setups.
And then you broke my expectations brilliantly.
One thing that seemed a little odd to me was Twilight's word-choice of "reset". Not "I'm in the past", or "I've taken the place of my past self", but "everything has reset". I guess it makes sense here, since the focus here won't be on "I've been sent back in time, I must find a way home", but still a bit of an odd word choice. *shrug*
...Wait, you've called this story "The day the show reset".
Does that mean Pinkie Pie, on some level, will be aware it's a rerun?
Awesome fic picture. I love groundhog day. Therefore this fic is now favorited/tracked. Can't wait to see more.