Twilicorn Thing · 4:30pm May 12th, 2013
Probably late and shared with a dozen others, but this is my idea on how Twilicorn's going to play out.
Ep 1. Magical Mystery Cure. Twilight becomes Twilicorn.
Ep. 2. Twilight is enjoying Princess life, but finds that she misses her friends/Princessing has downsides as well as upsides/etc. This revelation comes just as a GREAT EVILtm threatens Equestria.
Ep. 3. GREAT EVILtm is defeated, but Twilight has to give up alicorn powers to get rid of it. She opts not to gain it back (if offered), preferring her Ponyville life to her Princess one.
In any case, Twilight turns back into unicorn, aesop about how becoming a Princess (gaining massive power, achieving a dream, some crap like that) doesn't really make you happy, but friends (magic of Friendship) do. Kids get a nice message, bronies can stop raging, and the 2uni:2peg:2earth ratio is restored.
Frankly, I think a reset button like this would be a bit lame. It's super-cliche and actually teaches a pretty bad lesson about friendship - that you can have either success or friendship, but not both. Why can't a princess be perfectly good friends with "commoners"? Shining Armor *married* a princess without her having to give up her alicornhood for it to work out, after all. Someone as humble and as committed to her friends as Twilight is won't let something like this get in the way with her relationships. Heck, "Princess Celestia's personal protegee" is a pretty high-up position in pony society already, and yet she was perfectly capable of making friends with a farmer, a pastry chef, a veterinarian, a weatherpony, and a fashion designer out in podunk little Ponyville.
In my opinion the best way to continue writing about Unicorn Twilight is to either set the story pre-Magical Mystery Cure and have the setting diverge from that point (as any fanfic written about an ongoing evolving show like this will inevitably do) or pretend that Magical Mystery Cure never happened and extrapolate out a future with Unicorn Twilight continuing to the point you want to start the fanfic at.
De-alicorning Twilight solely for the sake of not having to deal with alicorn Twilight, especially off-screen with an offhoof comment like you just did in Prevention, breaks immersion for me. It's a really significant event that would need to be a major focus of the story rather than assumed background. It'd be like someone writing a story based on the premise that Twilight is a single foal, "A Canterlot Wedding" airing and introducing Shining Armor, and then sticking a quick reference to Shining Armor being killed repelling the Changeling assault into the fanfic in order to keep it "consistent".
If you want to de-alicorn Twilight like this you'll probably need to do a whole lot more backstory explaining the event and tying it into what's going on with the rest of the story. You should also probably edit prominent mention of it into the first chapter or two (did I miss an existing reference back then?) since having it come up nineteen chapters in is rather jarring. You did suggest potential further significance via Twilight's strange waking dreams, so that's good - it'll give some significance to the dealicornification going forward, if you continue weaving that in. I just think that nineteen chapters is a bit late to be introducing such a significant background detail.
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I didn't say that I wanted this to happen. It's just how I think it's most likely to go.
I didn't intend to mean that Twilight wouldn't have at least tried to remain friends with the rest of the group, but that her Princessly duties would interfere with her interactions with them. Look at Celestia/Luna; the only ponies they really interact with regularly are each other. Twilight probably had opportunity to make friends as Celestia's student, but her personality caused her to view her studies as more important; now that her decisions can actually massively affect the country, I'm worried that she might curl back in on herself in an attempt to do her job properly (see the whole Want It Need It hoohah).
The only reason that she even managed to make friends like the Main 6 in the first place was because a) she was practically ordered to do so and b) she actually moved down to live in Ponyville. Again, I'm probably wrong, but her duties as Princess would likely force her to go back to Canterlot for simplicity's sake.
I was tempted to simply split it off before MMC, but I did get an idea that actually (in my opinion) helps the story. This won't come in for a while, but it will be present.
I can see where you're coming from about giving it more than a passing reference, but again, most of the current story had been published before MMC. I didn't intend it to come across as "De-alicorning Twilight just for the sake of not dealing with alicorn Twilight", but instead as a reference that could be expanded upon. The problem is that it'd be rather difficult to cram it in, given that such a significant event would already be known to everypony in the story itself.
As said before, I'm certainly going to be tying it in to the story. The alicorn thing actually helped me figure out an explanation for many of the events, as well as how to end the story.
Again, apologies.
It's good to hear that it will actually be significant further on. I'd still recommend doing some edits to earlier chapters to mention it, though. I'm sure there must be places where it would make sense. When they're first talking about how Twilight had the princesses killed in the averted future, for example, it wouldn't be hard to slip in her commenting "I was a princess myself just recently." And surely the experience would have had some significance to Future Twilight's actions, too - another place where it could come up.
I don't expect the show itself to retract Twilight's alicornhood, certainly not in as simplistic a manner as "she can't both be friends and be a princess". The show's been quite good about characterization, generally speaking, and IMO that wouldn't fit Twilight's character at all - she's proven herself to be extremely humble on many occasions. Boast Busters, the fact that she didn't even mention that her brother was captain of the Royal Guard for two years, etc. I think it'd be quite fine to have Celestia as Princess of the Day, Luna as Princess of the Night, Cadence as the Crystal Empress, and Twilight be Princess of Ponyville Library. Unlike Celestia and Luna she's not spent thousands of years on the throne yet.
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True, true. I can certainly see where you're coming from with this, and as I've said I'm sure they'll handle it better than I would imagine them doing. I didn't mean to say that Twilight would deliberately stop trying to do friend-stuff, just that what would appear to be required for alicorn/Princess duties would largely prevent her from doing so. I can't imagine that show!Celestia wants to have to deal with everything about running Equestria, but she needs to do it to stop the country from collapsing.
Twilight's status as a former alicorn will certainly affect Dawn/Future Twilight's actions, don't worry on that.
On the retcons, it's something of an OCD thing for me that I simply can't do them without overhauling the rest of the story along with it. I am planning to do a mass overhaul once the story's done, but I need to have it finished so that I can avoid anachronisms.
I've tried to reference any potential retcons or forgotten information in the chapter immediately following, which is probably something I'm going to need to do with Luna. She forgot a bit of Twilight's dream, and if I put that in I'd need to edit about 2/3rds of the chapter with it.
Cadence had the spare time to be a foalsitter and make kissy-faces with Shining Armor while still being a princess, I'm sure Celestia will be able to make sure Twilight's got time to spare for her friends. She's got Luna back to share the load with in the meantime - having *two* backup princesses to help run Equestria is probably sheer luxury for Celestia at this point. :)
If nothing else, those friendships are vital for the national security of Equestria should they need to fire the Elements of Harmony again.
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Cadance was a teenager at the time, it was likely that she wasn't at full duty mode and/or didn't have any hugely important responsibilities. Twilight at least appears to be an adult, and while they'd probably go easy on her at first, I have little doubt that some major duties would be delegated to her eventually.
The friendship thing is a definite point, though.
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Well, Cadence stopped getting so much free time when she started ruling the Crystal Empire, although she did get to look at Shining, what, with him being the king and all....
But yes, I see being an alicorn as more-or-less being on call duty unless you're actively ruling an assigned area, for example, the Crystal Empire. The whole "summoning of the princesses" deal in Equestria Girls is, as I see it, an example of on call duty.
I mean, sure, princesses get free time, quite often (if they don't have to be ruling somewhere, that is)
I know that was a little long-winded, but I had to get that off by chest
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Yeah, this was written a bit before EQG. I'm sure the writers can handle Twilicorn well (they didn't jump the shark with Twilicorn OR EQG, so they've given me no reason to doubt them) but this was my initial reaction to the news. It would make perfect sense for Hasbro to order this to sell more toys over the summer and then tell them to get it back to status quo.
Then again, this is FiM.
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" Sort of mindset.
True true
Hasbro could order something like this, but Twilicorn would have to go on for a season before so they could have a chance to phase out all the Twilight toys, then jolt them back with a "Hey guys! BUY MORE TOYS!
She'll stay a princess
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I'm aware.
Looks like you got the first two right.
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Wasn't planning to get the whole thing; that was just the first way that came to mind on how they could get around it without upsetting status quo / providing a good moral.
I have absolutely no problem with how things really happened.
1553957 Neither do I, I just thought it was funny that you got the first two right.