The first thing I've ever written · 10:11am Aug 24th, 2012
So I had a small disagreement with Admiral Tigerclaw over at Spacebattles because he wrote a scene about Twilight going Rapidash when Chrysalis beats Celestia (it's the latest entry in his scrapbox) and I thought if Twilight was angry enough to go pyro, she wouldn't be as restrained. Which caused this:
“Ah! Shining Armor's love for you is even stronger than I thought! Consuming him has made me even more powerful than…” The changeling cut off, catching flash of orange out the corner of her eye, then veered to the side making a stream of purple energy pierce empty air where she’s been hovering a moment ago.
“MONSTER!” Roared a white unicorn with a mane of fire and tears in her eyes, sweeping her ray to try and hit the black insect. “YOU HURT THE PRINCESS!”
“Fool! You think you are more powerful than Celestia?” Chrysalis yelled, horn glowing green, launching an attack of her own. Once again, two beams of magic collided and for a moment, it seemed like the combatants were evenly matched.
But the Queen’s words rung true and the point of impact moved towards Twilight, swiftly gathering speed until, meeting no more resistance, slamming past where the unicorn was standing and into the floor close to the crowd, finally launching a stampede towards the exits.
Chrysalis landed, her eyes frantically scanning around. The intended target disappeared, and her attack could not have wiped her out without trace!
“Oof!” Before she could react to the fizzle and pop behind her, a body landed on her then bit down on the base of her wing! The changeling shrieked and started jumping and bucking chaotically, trying to shake off her assailant. With a particularly might heave she succeeded, sending the now purple and singed unicorn flying then tumbling along the floor, a large piece of membrane still grasped in her teeth.
“Twilight!”
“Oh no you didn’t!”
“AAARGH! You, little, bitch!” Chrysalis choked out ignoring the screams behind her, eyes full of tears, leg clutching the torn remains of a wing, dark green oozing from the base. “I’m going to KILL you for t…” Her snarl was cut short as a pair of cyan hooves impacted her skull.
Notes:
Twilight is actually fairly quick to get physical and only her teleport she uses intuitively the way other unicorns do TK (see Return of Harmony 2 for example). All other spells are premeditated, and she’s unlikely to cast them in the heat of the moment.
There are two ways to look at the beam war: the straightforward one, or see the “You think you are more powerful than Celestia?” as a successful bluff – she was weakened after taking the Princess down the way ATC posits, but Twilight bought it and didn’t actually try to win, only maintaining the beam for a moment as she prepared a teleport – hence the moment where she’s quickly losing.
The “Oh no you didn’t!” is from Rainbow, but I didn’t really make that clear for the same reason the detail above wasn’t – Chrysalis turned out to be the viewpoint character and she didn’t know. It would also detract from the suddenness of the DYNAMIC ENTRY at the end.
That's really interesting that you throw in "Oh no, you didn't!" without explaining who said it. Normally that would be considered very bad, but since Chrysalis is the viewpoint character and doesn't know who said that, and is in the middle of combat, I think it makes sense. It's confusing, and it should be confusing. I've never seen anyone do that, though.
1460699 Really? Never? I'm sure there are plenty of dialogue lines out there only attributed as "shout from behind" or something.
Looking at it again, I think it would be better to add a few more lines that would be recognizable to the reader by speech pattern, like *GAAAAAAAASP* and "Oh my goodness!", maybe even "Twahlight!" so the reader would read them in each character's voice without an explicit attribution, as well as a line before that indicating the shouts are coming from the direction of the rest of Mane 6. It's trying to balance between reflecting the fast and chaotic nature of a brawl and making the scene impossible for the reader to picture in their head due to insufficient or confusing description.
...Do you often read the blogs of random former followers?
1461621 Once you've followed me, you can never be free of me. Didn't you read the fine print?
So why'd you stop?