Chrysalis: SoT Chapter 9 · 12:07am Oct 24th, 2017
Here it is, the great and powerful next chapter of Chrysalis: Saviour of Time! Boasts 'n' Bears! Actual discussion with spoilers and such after the page break.
I said it wouldn't be long before I posted the next chapter a few days ago, and I have now thusly delivered. Saying I had been struck by a sudden bout of drive and inspiration had been no mere boast, for not only have I written the next chapter of this story, I even had the energy to write an entirely different (and terrible) unrelated one shot about Bobs in Equestria, but that's not what you're here for, so let's talk about SoT.
This is currently the second longest chapter I have written. When I first began writing it, I had wondered if I was even going to reach a reasonable length of 6000 words, now here it stands at a little over 11 000. The length of this chapter was not the only thing that surprised me writing this, many things did not go quite the way I had anticipated and it ended up being a considerably darker chapter than at first intended.
One of the things I wanted to avoid with this story is having it called a "fix-fic" where I simply rehash the episodes in a way that I think is smarter, removing some of the stupidity and solving things with ease by showing how stupid the characters involved really were. I wanted to show that replacing Twilight with Chrysalis is not going to fix all of the problems that Twilight and her friends had faced with happy conclusions where everything turns out better than in the actual show. The last chapter with Gilda was a debatable case. Some things seemed to turn out better, and some things turned out worse. In the long run, perhaps you could say it was better since we don't have Rainbow Dash and Gilda's relationship destroyed (albeit temporarily until they meet again in Griffonstone) and theoretically once Chrysalis and Pinkie Pie resolved their spat, they'd be just fine too. Chrysalis' encounter for Trixie on the other hand? This turns out decidedly worse for all involved compared to the source material.
Chrysalis as Twilight is injured and has shown her cruel side to much of the town, including the element bearers. While she does garner their forgiveness by the end of the chapter, everybody still is aware of her cruel nature and is going to be at least a little wary of her going forward. Rainbow Dash is injured, though not severely, and is also hospitalized. Trixie is now a wanted criminal on the run in all of Equestria rather than merely a humiliated magician in one little town. Shining Armor of course is coming out of this arguably even worse since he was terribly injured by the ursa major and is going to lose his leg because of it. There's going to be no ass pull here, no sudden magical treatment will save him, he is losing that leg. He will naturally have a prosthetic to replace it, but that's far from as good as the real deal.
Now here's the part where I mention that most of that stuff wasn't supposed to happen. The initial plan had been that Chrysalis shows off against Trixie, earning a few laughs from the audience rather than outright terrifying them. Trixie was supposed to be after some revenge and would attack Chrysalis, but instead of curb stomping her thanks to Chrysalis being love starved and with a couple of metaphorical sucker punches (first dragging Chryssi out of the window which caused her to hit her head, then second when she was momentarily distracted by noticing all the ponies watching them), Chrysalis would have basically curb stomped Trixie since she had fed off the audience earlier. The bear would have arrived in a similar manner, but things would have ended much differently. Chrysalis wouldn't have been injured and with the help of Shining Armor they would avoid being mauled until only Pinkie Pie ran in with a bunch of pies she pulled out of her seemingly infinite hiding places, and she would lead the bear off in a very similar fashion until she ran out of pies. The ursa would be about to slaughter her (and Chrysalis too who had followed for some reason) until Luna instead of Celestia showed up and saved everyone. I thought that since it was night, perhaps Celestia was in bed and Luna got the message sent by Spike instead, but then I realized that Spike sends letters directly to Celestia and not to some general location, and I wanted to save an ensuing conversation with her for a later chapter. That it was Celestia instead of Luna was one of the first changes. I then changed it from Celestia saving everyone to her showing up too late because I realized I wanted to justify her taking Shining Armor away and not assigning any new guards to follow Chrysalis around. The other members of the mane six weren't initially involved at all with the ursa, and were only added after I realized that Chrysalis' humiliating Trixie earlier would likely alienate them. Trixie herself was going to show up at the end and be part of the discussion about why the ursa was there where she could defend herself, only to run away in shame like in the episode. Chrysalis was supposed to be about to chase after her only for Pinkie to ask her to leave her alone, at which point she would actually listen, having finally learned the lesson from the previous chapter for real. Things just seemed to spiral out of control.
In short, this was supposed to be a much lighter chapter without anybody learning about Chrysalis' cruelty, with Trixie ending up essentially the same as she was in the episode plus a few bumps and scrapes, Shining Armor being taken off of Twilight guarding duty, Pinkie forgiving Chrysalis, and Chrysalis herself learning the lesson of listening to her friends for real this time, even going so far as to give a proper, heartfelt friendship report to Celestia in person.
I hope you enjoyed this chapter. Next up, we're going to have Bridle Gossip and the introduction of Zecora. I'm pretty sure it's going to be far less grim than this chapter , but I thought this one was going to be lighter too. I guess only time will tell. Goodbye, everybody!
While this chapter definitely took a dark turn, what's impressive is you're going through with Shining losing his leg. Many fanfics are often mediums for wish fulfillment, but treating the story's bad events as having lasting consequences—that takes serious control. Your story is all the better for it. I can't wait to read more.
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Shining Armor is going to be out of the story for a while, both because he'll be recovering and because he'd simply not be around even if he hadn't been injured, but when he does become relevant again he will definitely be missing that leg.
It was a weird moment for me. I sent Fluttershy off to find Shining Armor and I realized...he just had a giant bear bite down on his leg and shake him like a rag doll. You don't walk away from that kind of thing with your leg in tact. Hell, he probably shouldn't get up from that kind of thing at all. I even contemplated for a moment killing him off, but only for a moment. I couldn't do that, I just don't have the guts for it. Besides, if I started killing off characters, before long I wouldn't have anybody left to tell a story about.
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That's good and all, but imperative is moderation. Shining being guard is understandable, but if all Mane Six by the end of season 3 is covered in scars, eye-patches and protheses, suffering PTSD, that's a sign that you failed to write Slice of Life story.