a very long post-mortem for an even longer fic · 5:37pm Apr 17th, 2023
I’ve never done a post-mortem for a fic, but I’ve also never finished a fic of this magnitude so!! Welcome to an overly in-depth review of my experience making The Twilight Effect and all the complications that came with it. Contains spoilers ofc—go read the fic first if you haven’t! And once you’re ready I’ll see you under the cut.
Intro
The first thing some of you might be thinking is, “Hey! Didn’t I read this fic before—” Shut up. Shut up no you didn’t IT DOESN’T EXIST
But if we pretend that the unspeakable does exist for a moment, the 2017 version of this story got derailed by a series of life events that I won’t go into. I fell out of all fandom and creative activities until about 2020, and only just got around to picking up where I left off with MLP summer 2022. So when I came back to Fimfiction and noticed I’d left it unfinished, I did the following:
- re-read my old writing
- cringed
- cringed HARD
- “i can do better”
- did better
(If anyone cares, the remaining chapters of the 2017 version were basically the same as the show: blast spooky monster with friendship laser and free Luna and then kiss the girl THE END quality writing wow!!!!)
So after I stopped throwing up over my old and shitty writing, I put together a new plot outline and got to work. This time around my main goals were a) to tell a better story than “girl meets girl blasts monster gets girlfriend” and b) favour character arcs + worldbuilding over sticking to the show as close as possible.
Setup
The Twilight Effect (which I will refer to as TTE for my own sanity) is a story about overcoming the past and recognizing change. It’s also a very, very personal story rooted in some of my own experiences. Not all of it, though, and I’m not going to specify which points! But including this “realistic” aspect was important in grounding the plot and making it believable, at least in my own opinion. If you think of a scale with a real human being at one end of it, and an EQG character at the other, I think TTE characters fall somewhere in between. Not absolutely real, but a little bit more than a cartoon.
I also embraced the EQG setting with the names of teachers and classmates, as well as for some aspects of appearances. Why did I use “normal” names before??? Who even knows, past me didn’t write that one down so idfk what was going through her head lol. As well, I’m Canadian, so I used my native spellings for words (except for Shining Armor since it’s a given name rip) and set the story in a Canadian environment / school setting with a few minor liberties. It’s a small thing, and maybe it’s similar to an American environment anyway, but it’s absolutely intentional if you were ever wondering for some reason.
For a bonus fact, I based the dates of the story off of my own high school years just out of convenience at first. Then, when I went to realign things to line up with full moons, it turned out that by complete coincidence those years already had a full moon on the second day of school, and a bonus partial lunar eclipse 100 moons prior to boot. I lost my mind when I realized, then thanked the universe I didn’t have to do any work to change anything lmao
And with all that, I’m now going to go through each act and provide more “dev details” about the chapters, the process, changes I made, etc.
Act 1
When I posted the first chapter of TTE, I’d actually written all the way up to the end of Fluttershy’s chapter. However, I needed to make sure I had a buffer, so 2 weeks between each chapter worked out nicely to allow me to write at a slower pace during the school term and not run out of chapters to post too soon.
The first chapter is pretty similar to the old version. This time, though, I needed to introduce a major new plot point: Sunset’s book. Since I wanted to stick closer to EQG I thought it would be interesting to incorporate that element into TTE in some way. One of the biggest plot points is “Twilight doesn’t believe in magic”, so the book helped slot everything into place—Sunset believes in magic because she has a magic book, this creates friction between her and Twilight, and the book “doing magic” can replace the god-awful magic coloured hair changing shit as the instigator for Twilight’s panic attack in chapter 2.
Some other changes in the first two chapters was introducing the rest of the mane 6 at different times, rather than as spontaneous gym class transfer students (cringe). I also tried my hardest to not have to switch to Sunset’s POV in chapter 4, but I couldn’t figure out another way to imply that Celestia’s magic comes from a similar book. And Sunset’s just fun to write, okay! Honestly, her whole section doesn’t contribute much and could probably be edited out for something else, but I’m fine leaving it as-is for now.
I didn’t really bring up Twilight’s nightmares much after chapter 3, which was a little bit intentional since... I sort of didn’t have a reason for them at first. I’d planned for Nightmare ofc, but not the details of what had happened with Luna yet. Thankfully, I left things vague enough so I could tie the imagery back into chapters 11 and 12, so I’m ok with how it ended up. That’s my writing pro tip—if you don’t know the details yet, keep them vague so you have room to work around them when you figure it out.
Things start to deviate far from the original fic around the end of chapter 4 / start of chapter 5. The auditorium scene is extended and far more detailed, and I COMPLETELY yeeted the terrible “break out of the school with a science bomb and also find magic rocks” detour that had absolutely no significance to pushing the plot forward??? Nightmare also got a rework, which I’ll talk about more later, and so with Sunset’s possession happening here the plot shifted from “break out of the school” to “find Celestia’s book to save Sunset”, which just feels more focused and has higher stakes.
I also don’t mention the prophecy Nightmare namedrops until chapter 12, but it’s written in the chapter titles! As a rule of thumb I prefer to leave “mechanisms” of worlds up to reader interpretation rather than over-explain little details that don’t really matter in the long run.
Act 2
My thoughts on this act are long enough to warrant breaking up this section into each of the five chapters since I want to talk about both trial design and character interpretation, so here we go!
Applejack
First off, the trial design. The original idea was surprisingly passable, so I just modified the whole “separate everyone and blind them” to a scenario where only AJ can see the correct path. This change also let me tell the chapter from Twilight’s POV so I didn’t have to do any nasty POV switching like the-fic-which-shall-not-be-named did.
Then we have Applejack. The main arc of this act slowly reveals to the reader what happened between the girls when they were younger, and I needed some conflict between Twi+AJ where she wouldn’t trust her as easily as the others did because of what happened in the past. I didn’t want to make her a “bully”, though, since it doesn’t suit her character, but I do think it’s reasonable to propose she might have gotten caught up with the wrong crowd when she was younger and been too unsure to speak up if Twilight didn’t ask for help—a bit of a parallel to her attitude when she went to Manehatten in her pony self’s cutie mark story, perhaps.
I also felt that she’d be the type to try and move forward and make things right once everything happened, which led to the whole disparity between her and Twilight’s interpretations of their actions. Twilight viewed all of Applejack’s actions through the lens of “pity” and thought she just wanted to forget what happened, while Applejack felt horrible for not speaking up but didn’t want to bring up bad memories unprompted since Twilight never brought it up first. So while they may have been on speaking terms and acted civil to each other, Applejack thought they were much better acquaintances than they really were.
Finally, while Twilight’s hesitation to listen to her might seem ridiculous considering her life was in danger, if you constantly paint someone in a bad light in your head and haven’t allowed yourself to see any change in them it can be incredibly difficult to change your way of thinking all of a sudden. And then in stressful moments adrenaline can sometimes cement your beliefs in familiarity, which is why Twilight clung to “Applejack won’t help me” until she literally had no other choice but to discard that belief and trust her.
Fluttershy
Oh boy. This was one of the hardest chapters in the entire fic, and I still don’t really know the reason why! Fluttershy’s difficult for me to write, sure, but I was really invested in the trial concept and her interactions with Twilight, so who knows why I got writer's block like twenty separate times. My opinion on it has improved as time’s gone on though, so maybe it’s not actually as bad as I first thought it was.
The trial changed a ton from the previous version. The old one pretty much copy-pasted from the show, and I needed to find a way to facilitate interaction between Fluttershy and Twilight in a way that contributed to the overall “bullying” plotline. The show had Fluttershy notice the manticore was suffering when her friends didn’t, so I’m really proud I thought to make Twilight the “manticore” rather than having just an actual monster to fight since I could do the same concept with her noticing Twilight’s pain instead.
For some backstory that I hinted at but didn’t completely spell out, Twilight, Fluttershy, Rainbow Dash, and the pegasus bullies all went to the same elementary school. I said in the chapter 8 notes I chose the pegasus boy trio as the main bullies because every character using “she said” was exhausting, but it was also because I needed characters Fluttershy would have already been familiar with. So just as in the show, the bullies picked on her a little but not aggressively, and Rainbow also stood up for her most of the time. Then in high school Rainbow met Applejack and also became better acquaintances with Hoops through classes + girls’ soccer / boys’ basketball running on the same days, which led to her drifting away from Fluttershy and leaving her on her own. However, because they didn’t want to upset Rainbow, Hoops and the others shifted their focus to Twilight and it all escalated from there. When Twilight attempted suicide Fluttershy slipped through the cracks in the aftermath: Rainbow was torn up about what happened and distanced herself from the bullies, who then took their frustration at getting suspended / facing consequences and directed it at Fluttershy, their old target, who didn’t have Rainbow to protect her anymore.
Phew. Bit of a lore dump, but it’s not something that ever came up naturally in the story. I think there’s still enough hints of this though that readers can infer their own version of similar events.
This chapter once again uses disparity between characters to define their arcs—Twilight believed that Fluttershy’s experiences weren’t “that bad” since she had friends and even reconciled with Rainbow, and Fluttershy needed to explain that no, she went through hell and back as well. The difference is that Fluttershy saw Twilight come back to school “fine” on her own, and she looked up to Twilight for being able to move forward without needing help.
Pinkie
Tied with Sunset’s for best chapter in the whole fic, sorry I DO make the rules. Probably because they both use my favourite “show don’t tell” writing concept of blindsiding the reader in a way that only the written word can do. It’s still a similar trial concept to the previous version of the fic, but way way way WAY better in content and execution.
This chapter is the one where readers finally learn what happened to Twilight, though with the omission of a few plot points. I didn’t find it necessary to go into every detail of her past, but the goal was to express a gradual buildup of harassment that was an open secret to every student in the school. However, despite all of it Twilight didn’t want to speak up because at this point no one knew she was Celestia’s “niece”, and she knew that if word got out she’d be treated differently by her peers. Celestia had to step in to break up the cafeteria fight, though, and in the aftermath she calls Twilight her niece without knowing that Twilight was trying to hide it. I didn’t explicitly mention this, but that’s what the scene in the car was about.
As for Pinkie, surprise! More disparity! It’s another contrast of how Twilight perceives someone vs how they actually are, this time with Pinkie’s attitude supposedly meaning she was “too happy” a person to understand heavier matters. I don’t think that would be accurate to her character if it were true, and I really wanted to emphasize Pinkie as someone who understands how to connect with people in any circumstance.
In terms of the backstory she tells Twilight, it’s unfortunately one of the many parts of the fic based on reality. This was something very important for me to include—not just because of the real-life aspects, but also because so often bullying victims try to “fix” their “faults” in an attempt to make the bullies stop, but once you’re a target it doesn’t matter at all. And I think that’s an aspect of bullying that’s so often overlooked.
As well, Pinkie wasn’t directly involved with any of Twilight’s bullying, but she always wanted to reach out to Twilight afterward, she just couldn’t figure out how. Thus, the seat saving and inviting her to join Sunset’s welcome party and the like.
The “motto” of the chapter also is very personal, and is something I had to learn myself when I was still in my undergrad. I think in TTE it’s a more appropriate take on optimism for someone struggling than giggling at the ghosties lol. Pinkie’s family seems like the type that would teach this lesson, at least to me, and I think that her understanding of “the world might not change, but the world will change you, and you can change the world” provides a nice background for her character.
Rarity
Pros of writing Rarity: writing Rarity!
Cons of writing Rarity: writing Rarity >:(
This chapter was also a hard one to write. I already mentioned in the chapter note that I struggled with the tone of it, and I think the biggest reason for this was that it’s really hard for me to write Rarity as a serious character. Not that I think she can’t be serious—I just find it’s much easier to default to her “unhinged diva” personality (see: whining about the trial like every other page???). Serious Rarity is very hard to write while still maintaining her unique sense of drama.
The trial was very similar to the old version, just with an additional two riddles added and having Twilight be the one to push her out of the circle rather than Rainbow. I had to come up with the riddles myself, and it was pretty fun! The change with her “saviour” was for better consistency with Twilight as the POV character of the fic + providing a nice transition into interactions with her and Rainbow in the next chapter.
However, I feel that this chapter doesn’t push the overarching plot along as much as the other ones. Part of that I think is because in this AU, Rarity didn’t attend CHS when the bullying happened. I made this decision because I felt the story needed a character whose interactions with Twilight weren’t entirely shaped by their shared past, but this came back to bite me since this chapter couldn’t play off of parallels or differences as strongly as the previous ones did. The disparity is still there, though, just more emphasized on Rarity’s perception of Twilight rather than contrasting how Twilight views Rarity.
In terms of the resolution of the trial, it was a bit tricky to make it believable that Twilight would just throw herself in after Rarity if they weren’t even friends. I think it turned out decent though. Instead of “I need to save Rarity”, her train of thought was supposed to be more “I need to stop other people from getting hurt because of my problems”. A more selfish motivation compared to Rarity’s “I can save everyone else”.
On a lighter note, yes, there’s definitely intentional Rarijack if you squint, and yes, my pony-world preference for Raritwi did leak through a bit anyways, sorry not sorry at all.
Rainbow
To close off my act 2 recap we have yet another tricky chapter. I think I mentioned in the chapter notes that it might feel a bit weird to have Rainbow’s trial happen off-screen, but it really didn’t add much value. Plus, this way the reader and Twilight can figure out what happened together, rather than forcing me to write a POV shift. I actually wrote the first line of this chapter all the way back in... I want to say chapter 2 or 3? And it never changed since then.
This chapter also struggles a bit with tone. However, I know the cause this time: I reworked it 3 times!
The initial rework from the old version was to have Rainbow save Twilight, Twilight gets upset at being saved, and then they argue which turns into a physical fight where Rainbow doesn’t fight back and just apologizes. It’s a dramatic concept, but it didn’t fit their characters + it felt weird to have Twilight suddenly so angry with someone she was neutral with in the previous chapters.
The second concept was to then have Twilight try to throw herself back into the circle due to frustration / Nightmare or something, and Rainbow + the others would talk her down. Again, a bit over-dramatic for me, plus it went against Twilight’s whole character arc of “I want to move on despite my past”. I don’t know if I need to clarify, but a lot of Twilight’s disconnect from her peers in TTE is because everyone in school knew she attempted, not that she was still actively trying to die three years later. It’s horribly awkward when you know someone knows you’ve done “the unspeakable”, and you don’t know how to convince them that hey, you’re not “better” but you’re better than you were.
Anyway, I kept that in mind for the final concept and I think it turned out a lot more tone-appropriate. I also got to use disparity again with how Rainbow viewed Twilight’s actions based on her past, even though they were motivated by something completely different, and how Twilight viewed Rainbow as a person based on someone she wasn’t anymore. It was also important to me that Rainbow clearly regretted what happened and blamed herself for the bullying, even if she wasn’t the main perpetrator, since it would feel out of character to me if she could just move on without a second thought.
Overall, if I were to rank how satisfied I am with the chapters in this act, it’s probably something like Pinkie >>> Applejack = Fluttershy > Rainbow > Rarity. Surprisingly, Fluttershy’s moved up a lot despite how much I struggled to write hers lol. And it’s not to say that I’m dissatisfied with Rarity’s but more that the other ones feel they were done a bit better (with Pinkie’s just being some of my absolute best work lol).
Act 3
Oh boy here we go—I am super super SUPER proud of how the last two chapters turned out. And the funny thing is, Sunset’s entire chapter never existed in my plot outline. Here’s a direct paste from it:
- then when they get to the office, twilight finds the sealing spell / book all glowing and sputtering or smth, but when she grabs it nightmare pulls on the fragment in her heart and drags her back to the auditorium without the rest of the girls
- celestia is wounded and can’t keep the old spell together any longer, and then nightmare destroys the counterspell, gloating
Nothing in between! But when I finished Rainbow’s chapter, I was like, hm, I guess I need to tell Sunset’s backstory at some point, right? So I was going to just have Nightmare monologue at Twilight to explain things, but as I was trying to hash that out, I was like, wait a minute. This is “telling”, not “showing” and it’s lame as fuck. Why don’t I just show what happened????
So yah. Tied for best chapter along with Pinkie’s like I said before, because they both turned out exactly as I wanted which is such a writer’s rush lol. Plus I got to tie in Sunset’s empathy powers from EQG in a different sort of way. And a fun little fact—in the third chapter, Twilight mentions never having gotten a detention before, so it’s possible to figure out that something’s “off” fairly early on into chapter 11 (which one of my pre-readers actually caught!). Also, I don’t explicitly say why Twilight sees her memories when Sunset checks hers, but it’s basically that the fragment of Nightmare inside her just unconsciously mirrored what the “real” Nightmare was doing when its magic made contact. Plus who honestly cares if it’s spelled out or not, this chapter was fun as hell regardless lmao
In terms of why Nightmare was in Sunset’s book, basically since it was sealed away Nightmare was only able to communicate with Celestia since it was stuck in Luna’s office. However, when Sunset breaks in, it sees an opportunity to make a link to the outside world, so it seals a piece of itself in the book (which then attracts Sunset’s attention and she takes it back with her). Once it learns her name, though, it shifts tracks to manipulating her as a backup plan to free it just in case Twilight doesn’t believe in magic when it’s freed.
But then grade 9 happens, and suddenly Nightmare needs to prioritize making sure Twilight lives toward the end of the hundred moons, partially due to Luna’s influence on it, but also partially due to their deal (a hundred moons of life is more than generous) and it trying to cover its bases to have two potential “stars” when the time comes. So it’s constantly watching over Twilight, and its continued presence unintentionally causes her nightmares. Combined with Celestia’s increased surveillance as the spell starts to run out, it doesn’t have the time nor freedom to return to Sunset, and so the piece in the book remains dormant until Twilight writes to it at the end of chapter 1.
And then we come to chapter 12, aka “Lili finally has to sit down and figure out wtf happened to Luna before she writes herself into a corner she can’t take back”. And I am only slightly joking about this.
Basically, coming into the fic I knew the “high level” stuff: something happened a hundred moons earlier, Twilight gets struck in the heart by something and that eventually results in her having a piece of Nightmare inside her she doesn’t know about, Luna was into “magic” while Celestia thought she was wasting her time / not working toward a proper job, and this caused friction between them, Nightmare gets summoned at some point and eventually gets sealed away with Luna in the armour, etc etc etc. But I didn’t actually know HOW this all happened. I think in the old version of this fic, Luna was supposed to actually summon Nightmare herself, and the magic from the ritual rebounds and kills Twilight or something, but I got pretty stuck on how to make that sort of thing work in this one.
Eventually I circled back around to the prophecy. And I do think one of the most confusing points of the fic is that I never spell out the prophecy and how it works—because I don’t WANT to spell it out, especially since the characters don't really have a way to figure it out on their own without Nightmare infodumping. But I know it can be a bit frustrating as a reader when you want to understand but the fic just won’t tell you why, so if you’re that kind of person, here you go:
- this particular prophecy is tied to Nightmare, and to certain constellations that when in place prevent it from crossing into the human world
- the prophecy has been in place for thousands of years and repeats every 1000 moons (a thousand-year prophecy’s destined repeat), since every 1000 moons the constellations align in such a way that their meaning can be changed
- when this happens, if somewhere on earth there is a human who can act as an extra “star” in the constellation with the strength of their belief in magic—and consequently, in magical demons like Nightmare—this extra star changes the pattern from one that keeps Nightmare out into one that draws it into the human world (the arcane-faith star shall aid its escape)
- however, Nightmare must find a host before the constellations shift back into alignment and expel it from the human world, and it can only take over those made vulnerable by the “darkness” in their hearts, e.g. Luna’s resentment toward Celestia and Sunset’s bitterness toward authority + her own past (fueled by the sun’s ambition infernal) -> in this case, it’s not a literal “sun” like the requirement of a “star”, but rather a metaphor for a blazing “sun” causing a “shadow” over someone’s heart
- finally, Nightmare’s magic will burn out the physical body of its host, so in its limited time it seeks to cause pain to the target of its host’s resentment and just humanity in general for its own entertainment (and bring about darkness eternal), and then gets banished by the constellations again once its host dies
- of course, Celestia interrupts this cycle when she seals Nightmare in the armour for 100 moons -> Nightmare is already in the human world though, so after 100 moons it will still have a limited amount of time to find a host when it is freed, even if the constellations that freed it have already shifted back into their proper “banishing” position, since it takes time to activate
- and finally, Twilight’s big “hero moment” at the end is because the strength of her belief is so strong when combined with harmony that it activates the constellations even while they are out of place, and this forces the prophecy to repeat at the “draw Nightmare into the human world” stage, which severs its connection to Sunset
- however, to prevent it from just taking Sunset back over, burning her out, and then being banished from earth for 1000 moons, Twilight destroys its form and absorbs its magic, breaking the prophecy and ending the cycle for good
If you bothered to read all that, congratulations! You now know more than I did when I actually wrote the fic :) Because again, I didn’t figure out all this until the final chapter—these details really don’t matter too much in the long run for telling a story, and if I tried to spell out something specific early on I’d just write myself into a corner that’s not satisfying to the plot. However, by dropping the prophecy early on and knowing the direction I want to work with, it still gives me a guide on where I need to take things and what I need to hint.
Oh yeah, I was talking about chapter 12. Let’s get back to that.
Basically, once I had a half-solid idea of the prophecy, I sort of worked backward from there: if I want the finale to be Twilight reverse uno-ing Nightmare, why would she need to do that? Okay, she does it to save Sunset. Why does it save Sunset? Because if she doesn’t, Nightmare’s magic will kill her. Why will it kill her? Because every time Nightmare takes over a host, it eventually kills them since their bodies can’t handle its magic. Then why didn’t Luna die? Because Celestia banished it from her body before it could kill her. How did she banish it if humans can’t use magic? With a spell from a book Luna compiled, and because it was an inhumane act. But how could Luna have written an actual spell if she doesn’t believe in magic? Because Twilight does, and she puts effort in to research and make things as “real” as possible for her. Why? Because she’s her niece, and she loves her whole lot.
And once I got to this point, I figured the dynamics of the “past” out much easier—Luna really cares for Twilight, and if something happened to her, especially something that she caused, she would do anything to fix her mistake. Celestia is so focused on her career and providing stability for Luna (which isn’t necessarily a bad thing) and doesn’t realize she’s neglecting / belittling her, but is also completely willing to give up her humanity and do whatever it takes to save Twilight. Twilight is caught in the middle of it all at the wrong time, and her belief becomes the catalyst that allows Nightmare to return.
The “ritual” is a complete red herring by the way—not all of Luna’s research is real magic like the sealing spell or the information about harmony, so this was just a nonsense activity she discovered and set up to do something cool with Twilight, and it was never going to actually do anything.
Finally, I want to talk about Nightmare. In the original attempt at TTE it/she was basically the same idea as the show (corrupted version of Luna). However, in this story I wanted to try something a bit different, and have Nightmare be an actual threat to overcome and eventually destroy. To build up its presence as something dangerous / demonic, I switched to “it” pronouns, as well as the whole “speaking at the back of your head” thing with the bold font—this is not a human, this is not Luna, it is an immortal being you cannot defeat, and it does not care who lives and who dies.
Except... then we start to tear down this premise piece by piece. Nightmare isn’t a human, but it still has human qualities. It does have some amount of care for human lives. We can see this humanity clearly in the flashback, where it does feel some pity that a child died—though it still won’t just resurrect Twilight for free—and a bit when it possesses Sunset, as it is angry at Celestia for Luna’s situation as well as the fact that Twilight forgot about Luna entirely. And sure, it’s set on regaining its power which will kill Twilight as a side effect, but it does feel regret for her and her situation.
The whole undefeatable immortal thing breaks down in the finale, where Twilight figures out a way to beat it without having to actually kill it. Nightmare doesn’t die at the end. I want to make that very clear. Its power still lives on in Twilight, and when she dies—if she dies?—that power will have its freedom back. But even being immortal and all-powerful it was still bound to the prophecy, and therefore it was still possible to save Sunset and take it down.
And the final premise that “Nightmare is not Luna”... I subverted this introducing Nightmare, since we all probably expect that Luna is Nightmare based on the actual show, but then subverted it again because yeah, she kind of was a part of it the whole time. The idea of the “loophole” in her deal to save Twilight’s life was the first part in solidifying this concept, since this meant banishing her soul from her body so she’d be “gone”. After this I had a choice: do I seal her in the armour alongside Nightmare, and make it so she’s freed at the same time? Or can I do something different?
So from this, I got the idea that she’s sealed inside Nightmare instead. That’s why the spell Celestia reads is in two parts—first to sever Luna, and then to seal Nightmare+Luna away in the armour, except that since Luna was severed first, she ended up getting sealed in the “magic” itself in the study, which is Nightmare. That’s the whole blue-white light stuff with the armor, I know it’s definitely under-explained and super subtle, but again, there’s no way that any of the characters can know this until the epilogue.
Phew! Lots of thoughts on this act, mostly because it’s where everything builds up to, so I hope that what was left out / what got put in makes sense, and that even with missing pieces the payoff was still worth it in the end.
Epilogue
Haha hey funny story, did you know the epilogue was originally just going to be Luna’s+the bike scene, and that’s it?
Yeahhhhh I didn’t plan for this unintentional fourth act at all lol. Well, I did plan it out in terms of events—I just didn’t do that until I sat staring at a blank page after the finale and went, huh, I kind of don’t want to be done with this story yet. And then I wanted to spend more time with all the characters, and then I made an outline like “eh shouldn’t be too long”, and then you all know what happened from there!
(Also, I spent way too much time picking those specific dates for a pointless reason: they’re all new moons / full moons of the years this story is set in, plus a few additional days like Twi’s bday and Christmas and stuff. Why? Because funny writer brain goes brrrr and has to put some sort of significance to everything it can, that’s why.)
Throughout the epilogue I tried to alternate between Twilight-Sunset focused scenes, Twilight-Mane 6 scenes, and Twilight-Incident scenes (Celestia, Luna, magic, etc). But there’s no set pattern to this, I just did my best to cover everything I wanted to address. Each of the Mane 6 gets their own scene with Twilight, which was really important for me to include to show how their relationships have changed between them since the Incident. I also wanted to show the (perhaps overly) slow-burn buildup of Twilight and Sunset’s friendship into a relationship, because I deserve to write some cute shit after all this drama gosh darn it!!!!
Oh, and my prereaders both commented on the Canadian-ness with the Tim’s and the festival and such lmao. I have maple syrup running in my veins and you can’t take that away from me. The og show is heavily Canadian-related anyways, with the voice actresses and the animation and all that, so I think I have a right to be a little bit proud :)
A lot of the events here are actually drawn from real-life events. Honestly, I think that if you can write situations from your own life in a way that adapts to the characters you want, it can help enhance the “realism” of it all—but I could be wrong on that. But yeah, the board game’s a real game, the festival is a real thing (I actually went to it the weekend before I posted the epilogue), Rarity’s style of texting is an exaggerated amalgamation of real people I know, etc.
A perhaps not-so-fun-fact is that there wasn’t actually going to be a kiss, or a confession or anything at the end lol. I was really struggling to find a way to have it flow naturally, and it just. Wasn’t working out. Especially with pivoting so hard from Luna’s scene into the final one right after. But once again unintentional plot points save the day, and I got the flash of inspiration for the artwork at the end (the kiss with the hands over the eyes) to parallel the end of chapter 11, went fuck it we ball, sprinkled the whole “no one’s a mind-reader” and the new year’s stuff throughout my outline, and then just hit the gas lmao.
I also didn’t want the kiss to be their first one—that sort of thing is so awkward and hard to initiate if the characters aren’t already in a relationship. And once again Sunset swoops in between my plot outline to insert herself, take a look:
- twi is jittery through the whole assembly and barely processes any of it, the other girls all do their best to be supportive
- before twi goes to leave w celestia sunset pulls her aside and tells her that she can call her afterward and she’ll be there to talk if she needs
- so they go to the hospital and celestia reassures her through the whole car ride that luna’s not upset or anything and that she’s been looking forward to seeing her
Yeah, originally her whole scene with Twi before Luna didn’t exist. But since now I actually needed to eventually write a confession, and they were already in the auditorium, I am so glad I connected the dots and managed to squeeze this scene in to build up to it. I think it actually feels more conclusive than anything afterward (though not entirely) since it addresses everything with Twi’s fear of the future / uni / graduating and all that, as well as brings things back around to the Incident before we end.
And finally, to talk about another intentional omission: what happened between the phone call interwoven in the last scene and Sunset’s birthday? Well, I’ll leave it to your imaginations for now, but if the kiss in the park wasn’t their first one and they had two days off school between then... gosh, I wonder if those girls were holding hands? :)
yeah they definitely made out
a lot
Final Thoughts
Oh gosh I could talk for ages about so many other things, but I’ve gone on long enough in this blog so I’ll spare you for now. I’m going to need a break from TTE for a little bit—considering it’s gotten every second of my spare time the past 8-9 months—but eventually I do want to bring chapters 1-3 up to the standard of the rest of the fic (since those were done all the way back in July-ish pretty quickly and need a bit of polish), as well as rework chapter 4 somehow so I don’t have to switch to Sunset’s pov. If/when I make any substantial changes, I’ll be sure to make a blog post to let you know.
I also wanted to give a shoutout to three particular writers: Monochromatic, Albi, and Aragon. The only reason I accidentally stumbled back into MLP last summer is because I remembered their fics and wanted to give them a re-read, which then immediately threw me head-first back into ponies and horse girl brainrot. Their work is fantastic and has absolutely inspired me to become a better writer, so if you somehow haven’t read anything from them before please do me a favour and check them out!!
But yeah that’s it! Thanks so much for reading, and I hope you’ll stick around for whatever I decide to do next.
2023/04/17: chapter 1 updated
Wielder of Names, Seeker of Thrones, King of Stars, Breaker of Infinities, Wheel-Smashing Lord.
...
Wait, sorry, wrong girl thrown into supernatural bull-honkery.
My God...
In any case, outstanding look behind the scenes. Thanks very much for spelling out some of the more esoteric magical details. Goodness knows there was no way to fit those into the story organically, but I love me some good magi-babble. Here's to whatever else you come up with!
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oh, that looks like an interesting webcomic! ill have to add it to my reading list :D and thanks again for reading, both the fic and the post! it's a bit "blah" to come up with all the details for things and then feel like i havent explained em enough to get to "reasonable confusion" rather than just "confused", so this blog will have to do for now xd
I admit I... really missed this.
Some areas were admittedly hard to keep up with, or lost me. But this was a very strong story and the passion shows. It's oddly the epilogue which really makes it for me - the sense of the mane 5 building in Twilight's mind from 'comrades in arms' to friends and seeing those bumps and growths along the way was precious and beautiful. Between that and the much-needed postscript with Celestia and Luna, I can admit it was my favorite part. Seeing these girls who'd been through so much be happy was so wonderful. And the final scene hit the victorious notes perfectly.
Thank you for writing.
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yea, i defo go pretty subtle on mentioning it, mostly bc it’s a difficult topic to bring up naturally, but also bc from twilight’s pov it’s something painful to think about that she’s trying to move past. even when reliving “the worst day of her life”, i had to b careful to not outright say what she was actually doing or what pinkie was interrupting, and it really only gets mentioned for the first time in rainbows trial (the “why are you always so desperate to kill yourself” blow up), and then sort of at the end of luna’s part of the epilogue (paramedics)
im glad u enjoyed the epilogue tho! when i say chapters i mean 1-12, so while pinkie and sunset are tied as my fav chapters, the epilogue is also incredibly special to me too. an unofficial fourth act where i got the chance to just do some slice of life stuff instead of all the drama haha
thanks for the comment!
I enjoyed reading about your thought process also, I know I said it before but I really enjoyed the art that was added to the story it's like the icing on the cake congratulations on finishing.
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thank u! the art was the fun part tbh, whenever writers block kicked in i just switched gears to work on art instead xd i found it helped me to not lose motivation, since i was always at least working on something related to it haha
God I relate to this so hard you've no idea. Just the other day someone PM'd me to mention they'd found one of my old blogs useful, and when I tried to re-read it I cringed so hard I turned into a living breathing prune.
Anyway! I wanted to read the entire blog but the start straight up tells you not to, so I fought my own temptation and i'll read the fic first like a normal human being now. I gotta say, your name has popped up a couple times around my friends, always with high praise (you've got a lot of fans!) and randomly browsing tumblr today, I stumbled upon your art, which was absolutely spectacular. Imagine my shock when I checked the name of the artist and went wait isn't that the one I've been told to read a couple times?
And then I came here, and went oh shit it is, that's some serendipity. Imagine my absolute shock when I scroll down on the blog and I see my name at the end there. Jesus Christ. If that ain't a signal to actually get off my ass and read your fic idk what it is. Looking forward to coming back to this blog and reading it properly then. I'll even make a comment that comes to say more than just "hi!! hi i saw your name hi!! i saw my name too!!" and everything. Crazy stuff it'll be trust me.
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hi hello your name in my notification box just gave me a jumpscare i had to take a good three minutes to calm down jkjfkldjlkj but UM wow!!! that's honestly so surreal to know that someone has liked something ive made enough to tell another human being to check it out?? and one of the writers i look up to the most no less???? absolutely wild, im so glad you havent spoiled yourself by reading the blog bc the reason the fic exists in the first place is exactly 1/3rd your fault so uhhhh i hope you enjoy? thank you?? idk even what to say tbh, excuse me for being incoherent im a bit starstruck atm aksdjfkdl