Solitair Reads The Immortal Game: Chapter 15

Ohhhh, this story really got me going. I thought I knew where it was going to go, that it didn’t have any more surprises left for me. It got me to let my guard down. But before I can compliment the story on the new direction it’s taken, I have to make a couple of notes on the chapter’s structure.

First of all, the two bits at the beginning seem more at home in the last chapter than this one. This was probably done in order to make sure that chapter 14 ended right at the climax of the battle, thereby maximizing the reader’s temptation to blaze on through to the next chapter (though this one has an even better cliffhanger than that). This is pretty much in direct contrast with the end of Nihilus, in which the bad guy was defeated, the good guy were all freed, alive and well, and everything looked on the up and up, with no immediate conflicts apparent until the next chapter (not including the whole thing with the big bad still in charge). It can be hard to decide which of these options is preferable, and that’s not even taking into account the fact that as with most fanfiction, the chapters were published serially. I’m sure a lot of us know what it’s like to come across an urgent, gripping cliffhanger, only to run out of story to satisfy it with.

But I digress. I didn’t particularly care for either of the segments that took place while that first battle was still going on. First we had two characters whose real names we don’t know dueling each other. Yes, Unimpressive finally got his own chapter. I don’t know why his cutie mark is a ying-yang symbol instead of, say, a liquor flask, but whatever. I did get a chuckle out of Unimpressive calling what cliched fight dialogue that the Cadet was going to say, and I smiled when he pointed out that the military was nowhere near as important as the Cadet thought it was. After all, the mane six solve pretty much every problem on the show, and while the army itself doesn’t appear on the show, we do see royal guards and in one case, the Wonderbolts being proved ineffectual in comparison. But overall, this rivalry can’t compare to that of Esteem and Rarity, so it just ends up getting overshadowed by the rest of the story.

I think maybe I’ve figured out my own preference in regards to original characters, at least when it comes to My Little Pony fanfiction. I love pony OCs to death, and I’ve even made a handful myself, but I prefer it when stories are entirely about canonical or background characters or entirely about original characters. Giving one side an increasingly prominent subplot in a story otherwise dominated by the other makes me feel uncomfortable for reasons I can’t entirely pin down. I’m going to chalk this up to personal preference.

The other segment consisted of Rainbow Dash finally reaching the end of her rope in battle, only to be bailed out by a newly revitalized Twilight Sparkle, who gives her an inspiring speech about how Dash is better and stronger than she thinks she is. From my detached, less emotional perspective outside the story, I’d figured out all of this stuff already, but then again I’ve never been made to feel so viscerally powerless as Dash has, so who am I to tell her that she can’t feel the way she’s been feeling lately? I fully expect that those same awful feelings and mental scars have not completely vanished yet, but this is simply the turning point where she’s accepted Twilight as a friend again and begun to move on. Yes, this resolution feels like an afterthought, but I can’t say I’d feel better if it got more attention instead. Then it might just come off as melodramatic instead.

After that, though, the entire chapter is from the viewpoint of Twilight Sparkle, as signified by her newly recolored cutie mark (called it again). Gone is the ineffectual Twilight with a bifurcated persona who takes pacifism beyond reasonable limits. Instead we have a driven, determined Twilight who is fully willing to utilize all of her potent abilities to put an end to this awful situation, and yet hasn’t grown egomaniacal and still talks like a normal pony to friends and family.

Luna, however, does not count as such, and Twilight gives her quite an earful. Celestia gets one too, despite not being there, and it’s not something I can entirely get behind. I reiterate that laying plans and manipulating her allies was the best option that Celestia could have taken, but I get that now that Twilight is in her right mind at long last, she’s starting to feel a deep-seated sense of betrayal, which I don’t have the right to take away from her. Still, Celestia doesn’t deserve to be compared to Titan like that.

But other than that, I adore Twilight’s speech about how she isn’t going to seek power and supplant Celestia as Luna may have suspected. This incongruity in Twilight’s character, her obscenely powerful nature and complete unwillingness to abuse that power (Lesson Zero notwithstanding), has always been present. Most of the time, after all, the show is a slice of life comedy, where the scale of power levels that Twilight sits at or near the top of is irrelevant to the plot. This is probably the main strength of the show’s primary genre, in that it focuses on character and interpersonal relationships far more than just putting hammers to nails, as the shonen anime that The Immortal Game emulates has gotten a reputation for doing.

This is one reason why I’m not worried about the news that Twilight will be made a princess like Celestia and Luna, with wings and everything. I can still think of plenty of stories that can be told with Twilight in this state, and I’m completely confident that her personality won’t change at all as a result. People have complained that she’ll be overpowered and completely unchallenged by villains from that point on, but I’d like to point out that not only has Twilight been occasionally been considered overpowered as she is now, but that the existing princesses haven’t exactly proven themselves invincible in times of crisis.

So yeah, Twiligh in this chapter has essentially become a hybrid of Superman and Cincinnatus, except that I don’t recall either of them having deeply repressed anger. Likewise, I was so caught up in the energy of the moment, of the desire to see Twilight kick ass and let those smug jackoffs know that they couldn’t do whatever they wanted anymore, that I didn’t realize that Twilight was displaying an alarming lack of forethought in her new strategy.

I spent the ensuing battle, with Twilight leading an invasion force, making badass boasts, and demonstrating the full range of her new abilities, getting worried that the “Twilight is OP” comments might actually be proving themselves valid here, and also kind of miffed that Twilight would be the one to kill Esteem instead of Rarity. I did not stop to think of the flaws in Twilight’s plan until Titan impaled her on his blade. This story pulled off the classic misdirection trick on me, probably the best way I can think of to throw the reader for a loop, and I completely fell for it. All of my complaints about the story getting predictable are null and void now.

Of course, my amazement at how well this was pulled off was soon replaced by horror at Twilight being completely at Esteem’s mercy. She couldn’t get killed off (and her face eaten, thanks Esteem) so soon after she got such an essential amount of character development, could she? I thought Celestia was a goner, and she’s still alive, isn’t she? But though the possibility of her painful death is slim, it still exist. I can think of at least two books I’ve read where the main character of the first book proves by dying that he’s not the main character of the whole series.

So AestheticB wins. He made a cliffhanger much more effective than the last one, which has made me more eager to continue The Immortal Game than ever before. Bravo, sir.

Spare observations:
-I was wrong about Twilight being able to wield two blades, but she can divide them into about twice as many pieces as most other bladecasters, so I’m giving myself partial credit. Nice touch making it out of the Element of Magic, too.
-I had to laugh a little at Rarity trying to make a new outfit for Twilight out of things like a starry sky. I remember a World of Warcraft crossover fic in which she had similar difficulty with fictional cloths like mageweave.