Destinies of the Cutie Mark Crusaders in the Shadow Wars Storyverse · 5:21pm May 24th, 2015
Introduction: I've been thinking about the roles the Cutie Mark Crusaders will play in the Shadow Wars Storyverse. Here are the results of my speculations, some of which I've obviously had in mind since I started Twelfth Equestriad Interview.
Scootaloo's destined for glory in battle, which is not always the happiest destiny, as Luna could tell her. It means that she's going to fight a lot, and live to tell about it, and it's very likely that many of her battle-comrades, among whom she will have made dear friends and possibly even found lovers, will fall around her, leaving her to wonder why she was spared. The real reason, of course, are her quick wit, her excellent combat reflexes and her special flightfield (which will let her execute defensive maneuvers impossible for most pilots). But she's going to see the wars end with the final victory in 1524, a field officer with the Aerospace Guard at 34, emotionally-burned out, loaded with survivor's guilt and utterly unsure how to handle the sudden peace.
She turns to keeping the peace as a general officer of the Aerospace Guard in the 1530's and beyond. After having lost more than one beloved during the War, and becoming certain that happiness is impossible for her, she finds love afterward, marries and winds up fulfilled in both her professional and personal lives. She has several children, some of whom follow her into the Service, carrying on the military traditions of the Fleetwings and Feathers, the families of her long-dead parents.
Sweetie Belle has a less combative destiny, though it's also tied to the war. As she grows to marehood, her great singing Talent develops. Glittershell, who also wants to be an entertainer, is increasingly her best friend in their adolescence, and both of them become good friends of the Great and Powerful Trixie, who brings them to the attention of her (eventual) husband, the theatrical promoter Piercing Gaze. With Piercing's promotion, their singing career takes off -- they do duets, with Sweetie singing soprano to mezzo-soprano (she has a wide range) and Glittershell contralto. In their twenties and thirties, they entertain the troops in the War and afterward are iconic voices of their generation.
She is forever haunted by her memories of the many friends she made among the troops, good Ponies who loved her and went off to die in battle. Future generations of the Guards sense this, and even as she ages, she remains their darling. She marries once, but it ends in divorce; a child results.
Apple Bloom has the longest-term influence on the future of Equestrian civilization of any of the Cutie Mark Crusaders, for she becomes an engineer, scientist and interplanetary pioneer. Her talent is to encourage growth through chemical engineering; she studies alchemy, botany, biochemistry, chemistry and engineering, graduating from Manehattan's Gather College in 1511 and the Morgan Institute of Technology in 1516, doing graduate work in the field during the Great Changeling War. She marries in 1518, but decides to delay having foals until the end of the War.
In 1524, she's the life support chief officer on a transport on which her husband is chief engineer, heading for the Moon to establish an outpost there against possible Shadow infiltration through the Lunar portals. Enemy fire destroys the bridge and damages the powerplants; she has to flush the main sunfire reactor to avoid the destruction of the ship. The engineering crew was trapped in there, and so she basically has to kill them -- including her husband -- to save the ship. She then manages to repair the auxiliary controls and crash-land on the Moon.
She establishes the outpost, and cannibalizes the transport in the process, using the additional resources to set up not merely a small outpost but a self-sustaining colony. This colony becomes the nucleus of the Equestrian Lunar colonization of the ensuing decade. Apple Bloom bears the child of her dead husband on the Moon -- the first foal to be born there -- and leads the colonization first of the Moon and then of other worlds. She eventually remarries, and becomes the matriarch of a large family -- the junior branch of the Sweet Apple Acres Apples, the one not led by an Alicorn Princess.
Conclusion: The Cutie Mark Crusaders have bright and special futures -- which is one reason why their Cutie Marks took so long to come in.
In my headcanon I expect Sweetie Belle, as the most introspective and thoughtful of the CMC, to become an obscure but extremely influential philosopher-theologian along the lines of Gamaliel; her music becoming outright sacrosanct.
Meanwhile, Diamond Tiara is an example of a phrase I heard once: "early ripe.....early rot."
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I haven't decided about Diamond Tiara yet. I know she's very likely to go through a decadent phase, and probably alienate Silver Spoon in the process. But she may realize that her true talent is for leadership rather than Alpha Bitchery, and grow into greatness.
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I could actually see Sweetie getting into that, maybe when she's past her energetic singing prime and wants to reinvent herself to have a new singing career. Possibly, a few years after the events of Twelfth Equestriad Interview.
You are something else. In a good way.
The poor fillies will end up living in quite interesting times, won't they? But good to see you giving them happy lives in the end; few ponies ever deserved one more.
Far better than all those pointlessly nasty tales where they get brutally murdered/become brutal murderers (I remember one where they got their cutie marks after torturing Diamond Tiara to death!)/have something horrible destroy their lives.
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I'm glad you liked it. I wanted to make all three of them great successes in life, but I also wanted each of them to pay a meaningful price in pain, given that they are about to go through a colossal war. And I wanted to make sure that the integrity of their characters was maintained, that they didn't just become Straw Nihilists as adults because Idealism Is For Kids. They're not kids any more past 1508 or so, and they've been through a lot of crap by the end of the Shadow Wars when they're in their mid thirties, but they grow to be heroines, not cynical bitches.
Great times are ahead for the CMC in your verse, it seems.
Makes one wonder about the other fillies and colts that they grow up in Ponvyville with; what would THEIR future be? What of Twist? Snips and Snails? Featherweight? Would Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon are going to continue trying to screw the CMC over in the future...
Huh, I though I had read that Scootaloo succumbed to radiation sickness. Has that been revised, or did I read it somewhere else?
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I know she's still alive as of Twelfth Equestriad Interview (she's testing a new space fighter out around Neptune) in YOH 1248. I keep trying to inflict cruel fates on her, because she lives a very sort of high-risk life -- but I probably just lover her too much.
3103493 Necrocommenting for Jordan179, whose stories are taking up FAR too much of my brain space lately. (and the Child's, for that matter.) My SW headcanon on Ponyville foals is that Silver Spoon grows up to be an essentially-aloof but highly rational and persuasive mare, possibly with a nickname or actual name-change of Silver Tongue. As an upper-middle functionary in the Diplomatic Corps, she puts together the nuts and bolts of assorted treaties to forge alliances between Ponies, non-Ponies, and various subgroups; not so much high-level conference stuff as making sure that everybody gets enough in trade to feel that they're getting the better part of the deal. ("Okay, that's 40,000 tons of guns from the Griffins going to Zebrica in exchange for 60,000 tons of butter, here's a bribe to let the Sea Ponies skim off a percentage while we pretend we don't know about it...") At some point, Diamond Tiara uses her leadership skills to rally a small herd of stranded refugees to hold out against Shadow forces until help arrives, in a personal Moment of Awesome that she complains vociferously about afterward. Featherweight winds up basically being the Pony Francis Gary Powers, and Pipsqueak is Just Plain Awesome somewhere in the ground forces.
(I am in no way trying to dictate. But my brain runs away with me when there's nothing to distract it with. :)
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I like your ideas regarding Silver Spoon. Not so much the name change, but the basic personality and career.
My Diamond Tiara becomes a heroic Captain of Industry.
Pipsqueak is probably destined for awesomeness, yes.