Duelists of the Autumn Crown - Author's Notes · 10:20am Sep 22nd, 2017
Phew. So ends my newest long-term fic and my first crossover since my very first fic, Mega Mare. This one fared considerably better.
First, thanks to Albinocorn and RTStephens for pre-reading for me yet again, and Albino for pitching me the story and getting me to write it.
Story-wise there wasn’t much major change to things from inception. In Albino’s initial pitch of the story to me it was Scootaloo who would be corrupted by Sunset in the finals, but I changed it to Rarity to go for the Nightmare Rarity angle and bring in Advanced Dark and Rainbow Dark Dragon as a reference to GX. Beyond that, Flash was always intended to be worfed to Sunset, and of course Twilight would face Trixie at one point or another.
I tried to keep things consistent in one way - this is a retelling of the first Equestria Girls, so I mostly stuck to its plot points in a general sense. And as a couple of reviewers have noted, this version makes more sense of things. Sunset's plan makes more sense, Flash gets a reason to exist, it was the tournaments that split up the Humane Five rather than Sunset (which makes even less sense than her knowing about the Element of Magic), and there's magic in this world to explain some things too.
Speaking of - this fic’s relation to the anime and/or manga. And the relation is... there may or may not be one. I decided to leave things purposefully ambiguous, because I felt if I focused too heavily on the connection it would detract from the story and invite more questions. So while there’s a few hints, like the cast saying that magic isn’t entirely unknown in this world, it’s not intended to mean anything beyond “it might be a thing, it might not be.” Decide for yourself.
The idea of the magical trance stuff is taken from Arc-V and Awakened Mode, as is Pinkie’s joke about an interdimensional war. There were a lot of Abridged references too, which most everyone caught. A few references to the canon are there too, Sunset quotes Pegasus in her duel with Flash (”The first movie and already you’re nervous”) and Twi’s win against Sunset is a direct reference to Yugi’s duel with Strings and quotes that scene in places.
Aside from the Fluttershy duel, all of the chapters with duels in them are named after episodes from the original anime, or cards as with Shining Friendship and Supremacy Sun. I had the idea too late to name Fluttershy’s duel appropriately. The final duel was originally called “Showdown in the Shadows” or “Friendship is Magic,” but was eventually named “The Prodigal Showdown” on Albinocorn’s urgings. 
Finally for plot elements - Sunset’s backstory. It’s more or less the same backstory everyone has given her at this point - Celestia’s other student Twilight never knew about, grew jealous of Twilight, chose to go to the other world to escape it all. I glossed over the backstory precisely because it has been a bit overdone at this point, there’s nothing I could fit into flashbacks spread across three chapters that isn’t done better in numerous other fics, including my own Twilight Falls, Sunset Dawns. I gave enough basics to hint at what Sunset’s deal was and motivate her and Twilight during the duel, and chose to let readers fill in the blanks from there.
The major change I made is focusing on their rivalry from a less personal angle. Sunset isn’t jealous of Twilight for anything really to do with Celestia, which makes sense if you look at it from the angle of Celestia having several personal students at a time that she handles separately, like Cadance and Twilight along with Sunset herself. With the personal rivalry gone, I went for something different. Sunset spent years training to get as powerful as she is, but Twilight just has her power, due in part because she’s the Element of Magic. Sunset is resentful of Twilight because she had to work hard to get where she is while Twilight outdid her easily through natural talent. This is also mentioned in Sunset’s flashbacks during the duel, it took her time to develop her powers in this other world while Twilight is invoking hers in only a day.
Sunset’s character in this fic was specifically focused on the idea of proving herself better than Twilight, to tie not only into this “hard work vs natural talent” angle, also the dueling, with how much importance everyone places on winning and how one’s self-worth is decided by their dueling skills. Sunset wants to get rid of Twilight as a threat in the earlier chapters but it doesn’t pan out. And yet, it’s perfect for her - she can directly beat Twilight one-on-one and prove her superiority to her at last. Sunset is the classic Inferiority-Superiority Complex; publically lording her magic and dueling abilities over Twilight while secretly fearing and hating her for her superior abilities that are manifesting in this other world.
I chose to keep the fic’s Extra Deck usage confined to Fusion because I wanted to make it at least somewhat accessible to someone who doesn’t know Yugioh that well. Fusions are easy to explain to a non-player, you play a Spell card to combine two or more monsters from your hand or field into one monster. Explaining Synchros or especially Xyzs and Pendulums? That’s quite a bit more complex. And it also worked to harken back to the original anime where only Fusions were a thing.
Moving on the decks. Applejack as Plants is a no-brainer, same with Fluttershy for Beasts and Rarity for Crystal Beasts. Rainbow was going to run Harpies at one point, but that was too obvious, so she got the Ultra Atheletes to tie more into her human counterpart’s athleticism and I threw in Harpies for pony Rainbow at the end. Pinkie was initially going to get the Madolches, an archetype of monsters based on deserts and sweets, but that idea was cut because Madolches is an Xyz archetype. She got Toons just because I had to give her something, I didn’t have plans for her to actually be shown dueling, even in earlier drafts where she would be mentioned as being in the finals.
The other characters. Flash Sentry with Gem-Knights, pretty obvious given his counterpart’s role, and Gem-Knights are easy to write as a great archetype in an anime-styled metagame. Snips playing Fluffals/Frightfurs, again a no-brainer. Snails got Worms because most pre-Zexal era insect decks sucked. As is he got the short end of the stick in the duel anyway, Snips was pulling all the weight. I didn’t intend for it to be like that but it ended up that way. Trixie with Magicians, duh, the only issue there was to keep her strictly to Magician Girls or let her have Dark Magician too. The CMC got Vehicroids for Scootaloo because scooter, Melodious for Sweetie Belle because duh, and Aromages for Apple Bloom because it seemed to fit as a “rookie” Plant deck she could have.
Derpy with Synchrons was a one-off joke, don’t recall why I gave her them in particular though. Ember was just gonna be a quick mention, but then everyone got excited at the mention of her name so I tossed in the short scene of her dueling Flash to pad out the chapter and provide some fanservice with her Blue-Eyes deck, because why not? Smaller cameos include Lyra using Spirit of the Harp, Button Mash playing a Gradius deck (and yes, that’s a real thing in Yugioh), and the Mane-iac playing Elemental Heroes. If you’re curious I made a deck list for everyone on the Yugioh Wiki, you can check it out here.
When writing duels I had a house rule - no anime-only cards. Real cards only for anyone not named Twilight or Sunset, who only have original cards. That rule got tossed out the window during the Nightmare Rarity duel when I had her use Amber Crystal Circle and G-Force. I hated doing it but necessity of the plot demanded it because the Crystal Beast cards don’t have much in the way of defensive measures. I had a small panic attack while writing the second part of the duel because of the maths. I realized Twilight had attacked with a monster strong enough to deplete Rarity’s Life Points, and this attack had to go through so she could search out a critical Spell card. The only way for Rarity to survive would be for her monster to have 2100 points... except this would give her a monster strong enough to KO Twilight on the previous turn. This is what led to the convoluted Amber Crystal Circle move that let Twilight attack and Rarity can live without having to scrap a large part of the duel.
I had a similar, smaller attack for a similar reason during the Sunset duel, when I was re-reading the second chapter and had Twilight not take damage from Acedia. I was so relieved when I realized I had Risus in play, so I just had to rearrange the turn a bit so Twilight could have its protection in effect. And yes, the only reason Risus has the “negate effect damage” effect is because I knew all along Sunset would be playing some sort of burn deck and I’d need an option to let Twilight defend herself. As I said, I had this planned out from the start. 
In fact, finding the old PM where Albinocorn pitched the fic to me, the Shadow Game’s rules regarding memories of the two was the first idea I had on my own, followed by the decks.
You may ask “how does he know so much about the game?” Well, being a huge fan of the anime helps, even if I haven’t played the real game in years. Keeping up with the game via the Yugioh Wiki helps. You know what also helps? This link. Not a duel went by where that link wasn’t open in a tab. Flash’s duels in particular had me looking up cards constantly because Gem-Knights are just so versatile an archetype that there was lots of different Fusions he could play.
Let's move on to Twilight deck. Here’s a cheatsheat to start.
Twilight’s Harmony Spirits were named “Harmony Guardian: <Element>” in Albinocorn’s pitch, I renamed them to Harmony Spirit and changed their names to Latin, as it seemed too “on-the-nose” to name them directly after the Elements. Technically they were designed to be simple to understand but still capable of complex strategies. And on the surface, it’s easy to explain how Twilight’s monsters works: they each have two effects, one where you can discard them from the hand to use an effect, and one where the effect activates when they’re on the field and you discard a Harmony Spirit from the hand. Then you see all the myriad ways her cards can interact off of each other and the full potential of her deck is realized. I actually think Harmony Spirits could be a viable archetype if they really existed.
When I first designed the deck, there was just the six base Harmony Spirits and their six support cards, and Harmony Crown was going to be the final game ending Spell card Twilight used to empower Magia Amicitia. Then I ran facefirst into a blockade with the Snips and Snails duel. I realized then this just wasn’t gonna work out this way, Twilight’s deck was versatile, yes, but too limited in offensive power. And the duels were only going to get tougher from here; Twilight had to evolve with them. I wasn’t sure about the Fusions nor the auxiliary six Spirits, but ended up going with both. The CMC worked as generic supporters, Celestia and Luna as heavy hitters is obvious, as is Spike as a Fusion Substitute with synergy with Twilight’s card. “Congratulations, Draco, you’re the new Harmony Spirit Pietas!” Celestia and Luna were named to Helios and Selena for the Greek names for the sun and moon, because it happens the Latin word for moon is Luna, so obviously that wasn’t gonna work.
Twilight’s Fusion cards were all designed as just stronger forms of the originals, with Risus Fera adopting a bounce effect from Harmony Balloon. Gracia Natura didn’t see much play because, as she negates all destruction of any Harmony Spirit for the turn, she severely shuts down offensive play and makes Twilight untouchable. The sixth fusion, for Twilight, was always going to be saved for the Sunset duel. It was originally called Amicitia Magnus (”Grand Friendship”), then changed to Magia Amicitia for the more punny name and to be consistent with the naming theme of the other five. This was actually a headache because I had the final combo written months in advance, then when I opened the doc to expand it into a full chapter I had to go back and change Amicitia Magnus to Magia Amicitia. Because those names aren’t confusing at all. 
Moving on to Sunset’s deck.
In their earliest incarnation Sunset’s cards were named Pyro Spirits, renamed to Infernal to sound more demonic and impressive. I initially had them as demonic, corrupted versions of the Mane Six, particularly basing them on this image. I changed this to basing them from pre-S4 villains just for the rule of cool. I didn’t worry too much about specifically making Sunset’s cards each parallel one of Twilight’s, as it would have been forced and would limit what I could do with either. In an earlier draft, Discord was the spirit of Sloth with Nightmare Moon as Envy and Trixie as Gluttony, which didn't work. Flim and Flam became Gluttony to shift Trixie to Envy and Nightmare Moon to Sloth, playing on Sloth in the religious sense of one neglecting their duties to God.
Technically, Sunset’s deck was designed to be the polar opposite of Twilight’s. Twilight’s deck is about friendship and teamwork, her cards discarding themselves to protect and empower each other and using Fusion to combine their powers. Sunset’s deck is about destruction and pain, her cards banish each other to use their effects and she uses them as pawns to hurt her enemies. This is reflected in their stats, 500/500; they have no identity beyond how Sunset can use them to damage the enemy as she awaits the arrival of Superbia, which forsakes all aid in favor of its own power. In hindsight I regret their uniform stats, as during the final duel it made any form of offensive play from Sunset impossible.
Sunset’s deck was slightly redesigned when the time came to see it in action. I had designed it before the decision to make the final duels use 8000 LP instead of 4000, so her deck was underpowered and needed an overhaul. It underwent further redesigns while writing the final duel. It had to be strong, but in the right ways; too many destruction and defensive effects and Twilight would struggle to fight back, and too many burn effects and Twilight’s LP would shrivel away in a few turns. On the other hand if she lacks for effective defensive and support effects Twilight will steamroll her without trouble. The possibility of using auxiliary Spirits named after other historical Deadly Sins came up, but I decided not to go with it and it turned out not to be needed.
Finally, Sunset's deck ended up adding some Biblical symbolism flavoring to the fic beyond what I intended. Her deck is named after the Seven Sins with her own demonic form embodying the Sin of Pride, the one most closely associated with Lucifer. Sunset is Celestia's former student that went into self-imposed banishment to another world, corrupted its people to evil and darkness, and intends to invade her homeland with an army of demons, forcing Twilight, Celestia's other student, to come through the portal and redeem her and cleanse the student body of the darkness Sunset has spread. TL;DR Sunset is pony!Satan and Twilight is pony!Jesus. Not my intent, it really wasn't, but the symbolism ended up lining up anyway.
So yeah, that's about it for author notes. Not sure on a sequel or even my next fic, but we'll see where the road takes us. If you've got any other questions feel free to hit me up in the comments. Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoyed Duelists of the Autumn Crown!
Wow, even as your pre-reader I didn't realize just how much thought (and math!) went into this. I'd probably melt me brain trying to keep track of all the intricacies involved.
Nice work! As always, it's been a pleasure.
4675284
Like Twilight said; balancing a card game is hard.
Same to you my friend.
Wow, just seeing how much thought and effort went into this is really impressive. As a former Yugioh-lunatic I enjoyed this story from start to finish and I'm looking forward to whatever you write next (no matter sequel or something completely different, as long as it has Sunset)
I definitely appreciated how much thought and effort went into the original designs. Heck, balancing Yu-Gi-Oh seens a lot harder than Magic given the much more open and exploitable resource system. You did a phenomenal job in making the two decks in terms of flavor, mechanics, and dramatic potential. (Though to be honest, I didn't really catch a lot of the Infernal Spirits' character bases.)
I'm so glad I handed this off to you. Not only was I too busy with Across the Shimmering Sea and Spectacular Seven you know a hell of a lot more about this game than I do. The, pun intended, harmony in Twilight's deck is great. My version didn't really have much of that. It was just play cards and hope good stuff happens. Yours has a lot more strategy and design to it.
So, we're doing Digimon next, right?
4675474
Hmmm....
Twilight - Knowledge
Pinkie - Friendship
Fluttershy - Love
Rainbow - Courage
Rarity - Reliability
Applejack - Sincerity
Sunset - Crest of Envy / Corrupted Crest of Hope.
Not the next fic. After something like this, a break and something different is always a good idea. I personally would like to see a sequel to it, however. I am curious about the decks the Dazzlings would use which would have to be similar but unique to each one, and a team duel with Sparkle and Shimmer.
Would it be possible to use the Harmony Spirits deck in my own fic? I'm asking for probably more than myself and I've... had an idea for an Anime style Yu-Gi-Oh crossover starring Sunset but the archetype I'd made up failed horribly.
4676461
Go for it. :)
4676463
Thank you. though I admit to be considering it as a 'sequel' to yours... with a few alterations to firmly set it just post GX (probably the Paradox movie), to remove the complexities of Synchro/Xyz/Pendulum. At most I was thinking thinking of making Harmony Guardian Compassio into one of the first Synchro monsters, a reward from Pegasus for entertaining him at a tournament he was attending.
I was also thinking of altering a few decks, specifically Rarity's into the Armor Archetype from Waking the Dragons. Thought it fit her better, and keeps the Unique deck structure from the anime.
4676469
You can do as you like but I'd prefer you not frame it as a sequel to mine, please. I dislike the idea of recursive fics.
4676495 No problem. I'll make sure you are listed as an Inspiration.
Your story was beautiful! I couldn’t stop reading it! 10000/10!