Scrapped story · 2:04am Nov 17th, 2022
Whilst writing "And In The Dawn of True Peace" but before conceiving "Rainbows of Fate", there was originally another story I had planned that was basically a MLP version of the Batman TAS episode "Perchance to Dream." Set after "School Daze" but before Season 9, it would have been an idealised world where the many threats to Equestria never emerged for one reason or another and things had always been in a similar utopic state to "The Last Problem" only with the likes of Chrysalis or Tirek also integrated. It would have eventually been revealed to be Discord who did it not by mind control or brainwashing but messing with the timeline since brainwashing is imperfect. From mind controlling Tirek to be more willing to Celestia and Scorpan when they tried to make him see reason to changing key interactions between ponies and Changelings so the latter were never outcasts and Chrysalis never became desperate enough to create the wedding invasion.
Why didn't this come to be? Four reasons. 1. My writing strengths are mostly in dialogue and creating scenarios and not so much slice of life or mystery as this would be. Mystery stories can be absolutely fantastic but giving someone a long build up to a dissatisfying answer can make the reader feel like they just wasted thier time. It's why the mystery in "Rainbows of Fate" isn't as focused on as the character drama. 2. The concept is so simple that I would have struggled to make chapters that were longer than a few paragraphs. 3. Discord essentially screwing with the timeline to create forced equality (and killing everyone in the original timeline depending on how you look at it) would be about as immoral as what he did in Season 9 if not worse. 4. I was already neck deep in writing AITDOTP and ROF was being conceptualised so I decided that it wasn't worth the effort since it'd be crap anyway. For these reasons, the story didn't even make it to 100 words.
This story by the way is where the pretentious paragraph about time and reality came from. It was much more applicable there since things were very AU but I liked the description enough to copy it over for my real second story. This wasn't the only story I've thought of (such as a sequel to "Nightmare State of Mind" which I scrapped because this story sounded more interesting and the concepts are quite similar) but the others never made it past basic concepts.
Not to mention Discord woukd haye equallity for its opposite of his nature