Epilogue
It had been a grueling five years. Starlight found out pretty quickly that working 72 hours a week was too much for her to handle, so Twilight was kind enough to allow her to complete her punishment at a slower pace. She had just finished her last hour of community service the previous day, and was now once again in the castle of friendship, waiting for Twilight to arrive to assess Starlight's progress.
The verdict was a foregone conclusion in Starlight's eyes. She hadn't been able to hold a grudge against Twilight for even the first year of her service. Taking the couple of times Starlight had used her magical prowess to assist Twilight and her friends in saving the world, Starlight figured that after this meeting she would be free once more.
She certainly felt like she wasn't evil anymore. Nowadays, she wondered how she ever convinced herself that starting a cult or using time magic in a plot for petty revenge was anything other than a dumb idea.
She even had friends now, true friends. She wondered how she had been able to survive all those years without anyone to share a meal, a joke, or her feelings with.
Above all else, she felt normal.
"Hello Starlight, welcome back." Twilight said as she entered the room.
"Hello Princess Twilight, how are you doing today?" Starlight asked.
Twilight gave a small sigh at the use of her title, but she was more than used to ponies ignoring her requests that they leave her title out of their conversations. "I'm doing fine, thank you for asking. You'll have to forgive me for skipping the usual pleasantries, I'm rather busy today and don't have a lot of time for the meeting, so let's just get started."
"Okay, I think that's all I need to hear. You're free to go."
While this was the outcome that Starlight was expecting, she was still a bit relieved that Twilight came to the conclusion that she was no longer a threat to society. "Thank you so much, princess!"
"Have you given any thought to what you're going to do now that you're a free mare?"
"Yeah, I'm going to join the royal guard."
Twilight was a bit taken aback at this. "The military? That doesn't really seem your style."
"Yeah well, when you have the same three guards watching your every move, you tend to get to know them rather well. From the conversations we've had, I've come to realize that I want to keep helping ponies, and the royal guard seems like the best way for me to do that."
"Well I can certainly say that you won't be a bad guard, I wish you luck."
"Thank you princess."
Starlight walked out of the castle, ready to begin the rest of her life.
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Feels a little out of character, but that's just the nature of these kinds of stories. I enjoyed it.
10751703
But to be fair, a lot of real world dictatorships have fallen over even less, so...I guess the moral is that such practices are inherently unstable by default.
...Yeah, can't say I'm a fan of this one. It's a solid story, don't get me wrong, but it's written with such blatantly rancorous intent that it legitimately makes me feel uncomfortable.
I think that's more of a me thing than a you thing. Sorry about that.
would the alternate of this be a timeline where starlight either accidently or on purpose stops twilight from being able to change the timeline back? like all starlight would need to do to "win" would be for her to jump back in with twilight when she is brought back to the present then knock her out and steal and destroy the table and spell then she tecnicly "wins".
10751671
Glad you enjoyed it!
10751793
I completely understand. This was mostly a stress relief exercise for me, and I'll be the first person to admit to not having the best of intentions here lol.
10751925
At least you're willing to admit it. I wish more people were that honest.
Well, that was unexpected.
10752049
The way I see it is that the showrunners were stuck with a Starlight who knew more magic than she probably should after her plot armor in the S5 finale, and so they had to stick to it at that point. The fundamental difference between the points that you made, and the bits I threw into the story is that you accepted that whereas I rejected it.
I'll also admit that I started to check out of the show at around the middle of S6, and didn't watch any of S7, S8, or S9 besides the finale of the show and the 200th episode, so I literally do not know (or care) if the writers put stuff about backstory in there.
There are a couple things I think that you're underappreciating here. One is how long it takes to set up a cult. Some of the most famous cults (e.g., heaven's gate, branch davidians, people's temple) took more than just a couple years to get to the point where Starlight's cult was in the show. This means that even if I were to grant that Starlight was as dedicated to studying magic as Twilight was (which I don't), then there's still a pretty big difference in the amount of time spent. The second thing is the fact that Twilight's been in fights before, whereas Starlight hasn't been shown to be in any up until that point. As a martial artist, I'm very well aware that all the practice and training in the world won't help if you've never been in a real fight/gotten hit hard before. It takes time and experience to be able to bring your hours of training to fruition if you were to ever find yourself in a real fight.
Additionally, after her third time getting into a major fight to save the world (which was chrysalis), I'm pretty sure Twilight would have recognised a pattern and will have invested time into not only studying magical combat, but also practicing it just in case the need might arise.
But yeah, I think the main point is that you're accepting the plot armor the writers gave Starlight, whereas the entire point of this story is that I'm rejecting it.
Anyway, thanks for reading! I'm actually quite flattered that you would put so much thought into a response.
The story I've read prior to this one had a... let's say, 'charged' comment section. So I wanted to start this comment off with appreciating the civility with which everyone here has been treating each other so far. It's nice.
As for the discussion, I can see both points. I could argue in Starlight's favor, I could easily argue against her. I usually try to ignore the fact that circumstances in our world greatly affect in-universe events. Because for as much as I love MLP and its world, it's a depressing thought to keep in mind that a toy company will always care about money, first - and maybe nothing after that. And that, for all their good will and creativity, the artists behind a show will have to bow down to the almighty dollar. Yes, the writers most likely had corporate mandates to comply with. I could easily see that being a thing. But for obvious reasons, I like to search for in-universe explanations.
You said you haven't bothered with seasons six through nine. They tried to rectify their mistakes somewhat by giving Starlight a little bit more screen time, fleshing out her character and ultimately, making her more relatable. I will admit, I wasn't exactly fond of her initially, but they managed to win me over.
No way around that. Just straight up stupid. As I said, I could argue in her favor, I just... don't usually do that. I just live with 'that makes no sense' and move on.
Doesn't change the fact that some events within this world still stretch believability to breaking point, though. Starlight winning against Twilight? Yeeeaaahhh... that was stupid.
I suppose that's the exact mindset that allowed me to chuckle throughout your story. It was really funny, and I enjoyed reading it a lot. So thank you for this alternate outcome.
11300551
I blame a lot of those weird inconsistencies on what I call "too many cooks syndrome" especially in later seasons.
In world context though...when Starburst left, and if their parents were as nutty back then as when we saw them (not the best episode imo) she could have missed him, and daddy was always "not now honey" which might explain his over the top wanting to be with his baby girl in the episode, he was trying to make up for the missed opportunities.
On the other side of the equation, Sunburst's mom would be the one who is constantly crowing about things for weeks or months afterwards, it becomes clear that she is vicariously feeding her ego by her son's accomplishments.
Or perhaps Starlight tried making friends but given how jerky pones can be she failed not just once but numerous times.
There's a creator on Deviantart.com who wrote a much darker take on Starlight where she has full out NPD or clinical sociopathy. In her mind a fairy-tail happy ending is her born right, and every failed friendship or wrongdoing is not her fault.
*grabs popcorn and leaps into the comments*