Post Script on Magister of the Deep

Post script for Magister of the Deep.

Thanks to everyone who read and commented on Magister of the Deep. I’m glad that the response to it was generally quite positive, and hope that you all enjoyed the ride.

When I began to conceive of Magister, it started out as just a basic thought exercise: what would happen if somehow, a character in MLP ended up being taken. At the time, I was still regularly playing Destiny (I dropped the game after D2 came out because I didn’t like the monetization direction the game had gone in), and the concept of the taken was, and still is, a very fascinating one.

At this point, I had recently re-read Solar Eclipse, and watched a mini-documentary on the events that led up to The Great War (aka, World War 1) and thought that the Anon-a-Miss scenario might make for a good inciting incident to introduce a taken into the story. Initially, the plot went in a fairly standard direction for an Demon Sunset AaM story: Sunset gets accused, rejection happens, she gets taken, returns to wreak vengeance on the school, CMC get found out and princess Twilight shows up to take care of the mess.

But as I was writing, I realized that while it would make sense for most AaM stories, that didn’t make sense for this one. After all, the Magister wasn’t acting like a taken would. She was acting like demon Sunset with a taken coat of paint. So, I scrapped a substantial portion of my chapter outlines, and began to come at it from the perspective of “what would a taken do?”, and how she could be stopped. At that point, events just began to write themselves, and the story became less about AaM, and more about the consequences of Sunset’s transformation into the Magister, and Twilight’s desperate rush to stop her.

Regarding the fate of the CMCs, once the story shifted to focus on Twilight and the fallout of Sunset being taken, the identity of AaM stopped really being significant, and shifted more towards AaM simply being the seminal event that triggered everything. At that point, the Magister simply did not care about AaM, because she was solely focused on fulfilling the Deep’s will. In fact, if somehow she learned about it, she’d probably have been grateful, because from her perspective, being taken was wonderful: she was free of all mortal doubt and pain, which was replaced by a singular, euphoric ecstasy and complete subsuming of her will to that of the Deep.

I’ve seen a few comments that the Rainbooms got what they deserved for what they did. I disagree, because that’s like saying every member of your extended family should be executed because you jaywalked. Make no mistake, what AaM and the Rainbooms did was awful, and should have been met with punishment, but losing their homes and lives was entirely disproportionate retribution. This story, at its core, is a tragedy: a simple, petty act led to billions of deaths. Again, I harken back to The Great War, and how the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand at the hands of a teenage Serbian nationalist led to one of the greatest catastrophes and tragedies in the history of humanity. I in no way think that the Rainbooms deserved what happened to them and their world. But, what people deserve, and what happens to them are not the same creature in so many cases.

Thanks to everyone who read Magister of the Deep. I have a couple other story ideas in the wings, but I’d like to wrap up my other ongoing project before starting on them.

Regards,

The Voice in the Water