The first alicorn to be born rather than made. A pony of incredible power. A pony with a very important destiny.
Under the guidance of the fretful Princess Twilight, the sardonic Spike, and the ever-loyal crystal ponies, she will rise from the ashes of a childhood nightmare to become the princess she was always meant to be.
The journey won't be easy, but she won't give up. She was meant to be the Crystal Princess. That is her purpose.
And she will stop at nothing to keep it that way.
An entry in Imposing Sovereigns III, using the prompt "Flurry Heart/DETERMINATION".
Chapters (3)
Actually, on second thought I might bump that rating up to a "T". As much as the dark stuff is mostly implication, it's still pretty heavy implication, so... best to play it safe, I feel.
Have I mentioned that you might be my favorite writer on this entire site? No, seriously; you're certainly the most underrated. Your stories are always creative (the Gladmane one comes to mind), and they're full of heart (I regularly reread "Too-La-Roo-La-Roo-Lar", it's one of my favorite things I've ever read full stop), and more than that, your command of prose is absolutely incredible. Absolutely inspiring. Every time I read one of your fics, I'm constantly caught in that battle of "I want my writing style to be exactly like this" and "You'll never fully be able to imitate another person's style, so make it your own!" and "If it's the case that I can never write exactly like this, then why even bother writing at all??"
Alright, I got a little dramatic at the end, but the point still stands. Because I'm not as incredible of a writer as you, I'm not even sure if I can accurately or fully convey just how much and what I adore about your writing. Your narration is always top tier. Like, you managed to show that Flurry kind of completely misunderstood the lesson Twilight was trying to teach her just with "she wouldn't get caught again" and it's a great blend of funny and also sad and also... ominous...
Seriously. You're an inspiration
when you're not a dream-killer.Of course, I love character-driven pieces, so I might be a bit biased, but still.Onwards to actually read the rest of the fic...
Ok now that I've actually finished.
Wow! That was kind of horrifying! I loved it. I've already said this, but damn you write characters so well.
God. I can't say I was entirely unsurprised with the ending, but honestly? It turned out better than I expected it too. Twilight's still alive, at least. I really wanted to see Flurry learn from her mistakes, but... well, tragedy tag...
Gyah. This is so good because I just keep looking back and being like, "yep, these are the incipient signs of sociopathy..." Twilight, Twilight! God, I know it's not right to blame you, but God, couldn't you have been a bit better of a teacher?
Oh well. It's hard to teach ethics. And Flurry is a tragic character too, especially because you can tell she's still struggling with what she did when she was younger.... but goodness grief, explanation doesn't equal justification, blah blah.
Carnelian is the real hero of this story. Twilight just happens to be the POV character every so often.
I wonder what happened to Carnelian. There’d obviously be some trouble with Twilight attempting to apprehend her for liberating the empire from a tyrant. But with what Flurry Heart actually did I can see her being quickly repatriated and a Crystal Republic under her Chancellorship being established.
Going by her sheer level of chronic overwork, Twilight isn't a good princess by her own metrics. Seriously, if I had to raise Flurry and run the nation, I would've dragged Celestia and Luna out of retirement by their ears and make them deal with one or the other.
And really, that's what bothers me the most out of this. The concept that Twilight's asked to be both single adoptive mother and sole monarch of Equestria with only Spike for the slightest bit of aid. Where are her friends, her advisors, even her own parents? Yes, there are other pressing obligations on all of those fronts, but there doesn't seem to be one moment of this story where Twilight isn't half-dead from her own schedule. If nothing else, I'd expect Spike to step in and force her to spread her workload around a bit.
As for raising Flurry... You know, I kept expecting there to be some subtle mental effect on Twillight, similar to the repeat spell. Some outside influence Flurry unknowingly put on her to make her knuckle under. We see her discipline Spike more thoroughly than this in the show. She knows that there needs to be a little carrot with the stick. If nothing else, Carnellian's earlier warnings should've spurred her to action. The omnipotent brat is terrifying, yes, but I just don't believe this is how she comes to be. How Flurry came to the conclusion that being born to power makes you more qualified for it, I'll never know. It's not like there's a culture of ruling by divine right in Equestria.
Also, the foreign delegates seem very unconcerned about the crazy mare up north willing countries out of existence. This is Gilda and Ember we're talking about, but I'd expect that to raise at least one eyebrow between the two of them. I suppose part of Twilight's packed schedule is information suppression.
Don't get me wrong, this is some well-crafted tragedy. It's just that the pieces don't quite fit together. I suspect it fell prey to the word limit in that respect. I'm amazed you fit this much in 15 kilowords as it is. Best of luck in the judging, and thank you for putting the appropriate amount of horror in DETERMINATION.
Ahh, a classic case of nature vs. nurture. Is this all at the hooves of Twilight? Or should Flurry take all the blame? A little bit of both? Or perhaps the wildcard thrown in at the end?
A little torn on this one. I got the gist of it and filled in some of the blanks, but there feels like some steps skipped to get to where we ended up. Like, I'm not sure what the heck happened in the climax. Crystals and pew-pew rainbow lasers for sure, but the logistics left me scratching my head. Did the chancellor instruct Flurry to create the dark crystals? Or did she just take advantage of Flurry's emotional state to push her to full dictator mode? Honestly, I thought we were headed towards Sombra reborn but that seems only partially the case here.
I did feel bad for Twilight. A lot was put on her shoulders all at once. I suppose the lesson learned here is to delegate more.
I'm overall impressed at how much this story covered. It was a whirlwind of emotions. Kudos for not shying away from the tragedy of it all. Thanks for sharing!
11021095
Yeah, im annoyed by how vague the story was about the Chancellor's fate. At first I thought he was the twist villain who was corrupting Flurry all along, hence her attempted murder of Twilight. But in the next scene theres a statue honoring her. Was the Chancellor evil all along, or was she just infected by Flurry's dark hearts?
Also, the theme is DETERMINATION and SIX magical heart shapped object are involved. I see what you did there.
11022493
I'm certain the chancellor's intentions were for the good of the Crystal Empire. Things seemed to be running pretty smoothly until Flurry "took over". It was a desperation move to get Flurry removed. I'm just uncertain how we got to the dark crystal hearts and who was in control of who in the big finale.
It could be left up to interpretation on the author's part.
Quite a parallelism with the yaks!
Quite a tragedy! Flurry Heart was coddled too much--she was rightly told it wasn't her fault what happened to her parents (since she didn't even know what she was doing) but then she internalized it and Twilight encouraged that attitude while treading too lightly with her. That said, some aspects of her continued psychopathy were a bit cartoon-villainish, but since this is about a cartoon, some exaggerations are understandable. I'll enjoy it/interpret it as a tragedy and a morality play about those who are "born" to rule and who choose not to learn versus those who "learn how" to rule.
(Although, as apparently shown with Twilight, even those who learn how to rule are not themselves perfect and apparently can't solve everything for others who have flaws--alas--another tragedy).
A clever idea!
11022501
True, I suppose. Either way, it seems Flurry Heart was Equestria's "Best Nightmare."
I just realized something else, why is the extermination of the Yaks just brushed aside? Yes, the story says they just disappeared, and I suppose they might reappear in a thousand years like the Crystal Empire did, but then again, maybe Flurry atomized them all. Why didnt any of the other races do anything? Arent Dragons and Yaks friends now. Why isnt Ember declaring war? What about Yona? Was she there during the genocide? If so, what about Sandbar? Was he there too? If so, what about their friends? You'd think theyd storm Twilight's castle and demand Flurry's head. Or are Twilight and Spike the only ones who know it wasn't an avalanche. But seriously, who would believe that?
Well, if the continuity issues are going to be that big a stumbling block, then I'll mark this as A.U.
11023550
She disappeared them.
I would not be doing anything other then sending her boxes of candy and toys.
And the chancellor was enabling the evil and was with her all the way.
Twilight was oblivious. Flurry was sociopathic and in denial. But the chancellor was actually an enabler of the evil. You don’t help hitler run Germany more efficiently.