It's Weird How A Youtube Comment Can Give You A Sense Of Perspective. · 3:35am Aug 12th, 2017
Hau Tak Leighton Tam
Imagine the shame of disappointing a man who is simultaneously your father, your teacher, your commander, your king, and your God.
Sweet merciful heavens. I know it's a comment about a scene from Fury Road, but there's a parallel there that I simply cannot ignore.
Ever wonder what Twilight Sparkle's life is like? Twilight Sparkle is the personal student to Princess Celestia, who is simultaneously a mother-figure, her teacher, her leader, her ruler, and her goddess. Being Celestia's student comes with a lot of privileges, but also a massive amount of pressure. She has to not only meet, but exceed, Celestia's expectations. And because she is in the position she is in, Twilight has to do it every second of every day.
And there are definite signs that she feels every bit of that strain.
Twilight's biggest fear is disappointing Celestia. That's canon, thanks to Sombra's Door of Nightmares. There is literally nothing in the world worse than the thought of disappointing Celestia. Period. Which means she fears it more than death, the loss of friendship, the death of friends and family, the end of the world, literal freakin' torture, ponies being murdered right in front of her, none of it holds a candle to disappointing a single pony. She once had quasi-psychotic break and nearly destroyed Ponyville in Lesson Zero because of the fact that she didn't have a friendship problem to report. She nearly let the Crystal Empire fall to King Sombra because Celestia had told Twilight that saving the kingdom was her responsibility. Let that sink in for a minute: She nearly let thousands of ponies experience a fate worse than death, with repercussions that would threaten all of Equestria, because she didn't want to disappoint Celestia.
I read a fic once where Discord pranked Twilight Sparkle by sending fake letters from Celestia. This culminated in Twilight burning down her home because she thought Celestia wanted it. Given what we've seen of Twilight, I believe it. And if she thought that Celestia wanted it, Twilight would probably slit her friends' throats with an honest to goodness smile on her face while whistling a jolly tune.
My apologies for not remembering properly, was your story the one that left on a cliffhanger with Twilight and Tantabus featuring the Over-goat in the throne room?
Or, is yours the evil Twilight filly with the cat person who's taking care of spike?
Spoilers are for people who want to read it (you should) and don't like having major plot points spoiled.
In SFaccountant's Age of Iron storyline (book 6, Entrenchment), a character named Tellis made a bet that Twilight would do anything Celestia told her to. We as readers only found out well after Twilight was on her way to the Eye of Terror at "Celestia's" request. Then, moments after she was told of the ruse, he sent another fake message (which he had claimed was an apology) demanding that she go and kill another character named Sliver, an act that she immediately rationalized and was on her way to carry out before Spike pointed out the numerous spelling/grammar mistakes, including a signature by Princess Celestial. That's right, Purple Smart didn't notice spelling errors because something close to the Princess's name was on the paper.
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Ooh, I do like SF accountant's crossovers that particular story might be fun.
The plot kind of reminds me of that movie based on the Scott Millgram case (not to be confused with the Zimbardo experiment) where someone in Florida passed himself off as a police officer named Scott Millgram over the phone and talked a Mc Donald's manager and her boyfriend into doing a cavity search on an underage victim employee while holding her hostage for hours on end. My understanding is the manager was fired, and her boyfriend did jail time for statutory rape. The "prank" caller was caught.... and I would hope the employee got a big settlement, counseling, and a college degree out of the incident.
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I can believe it. Twilight is so... desperately eager to please when it comes to Celestia. Which I find curious and a little disturbing: I mean, she has loving, doting parents and an older brother. Heck, she even had friends in Canterlot before the show started, so she wasn't completely friendless starting out. You normally only see the kind of devotion Twilight has for Celestia in people who have no parents, and in fact no friends whatsoever in their life. Twilight's devotion is less that of a student towards a teacher, and more that of a follower to a god... which is sort of appropriate, but only makes things more disturbing if you begin to examine that idea more closely.
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Another story (forgot which this time) suggested that her parents were the ones to blame. Themselves paranoid (albeit less so) about disappointing the God-Princess, they exaggerated every consequence and demonized every less-than-perfect act that, as an adult, she feared that she would permanently lose her intellect if she had a single hard cider. By that point, they were also responsible for the "imprisoned in the place she was banished to" line, using it as their version of "or we'll sell you to the gypsies" line my family always used, only not jokingly. Of course her repressed mind control fetish which was pointed out by My Little Hypnofetish likely didn't help. Parasprites? Spell to alter what they view as food. Discord alter your friends personality? Memory spell. Want it need it, reformation spell, the fruit bats, her go-to spells are mind spells. Since mind spells (the things she is theorized to love) are generally views in a villainous light, she feels she already has to make up for what she considers bad. As for friends, the gyrocopter parents might have spun 'peer pressure' into this horrible thing, or she would have been to frantic about her studies to try. Hell, she might have felt the same kind of gap she feels as a princess. Despite the enemies a paradigm of virtue accrues, she maintains few to no guards and still allows free access to Friendship Castle, all because she doesn't want the same feeling of there being a wall around her.