Disgaea: Disharmony of Friendship - The Story that Never Was

So once upon a time, over on the ye-olde land of Deviant Art, around the same time I was writing Silent Ponyville originally, I was writing a story called Disgaea: Disharmony of Friendship! It was a Disgaea crossover, and I even made a whole flash intro for it and only ever finished Chapter 1 of the fic.

And over the years I've known people wished for me to continue the story Disgaea: Disharmony of Friendship, wondering if I would ever get back to it. And to be honest, I've wanted to for several years, but other projects always took priority. Projects I was either more passionate about, or projects that straight up let me earn a living while also creating them. So in the back of my mind I was convincing myself that I would one day come back to Disharmony of Friendship and if not write it, create it in some way.

Maybe I could turn it into a radio play! Do visuals but let the voice actors do the majority of the work! This turned out to be a lot more work than I thought it would be and I couldn't take time away from my other projects to work on it. Plus keeping track of VAs and writing lines to be spoken vs lines to be read is difficult.

Maybe I could turn it into a visual novel! That would let me draw all the assets in advance, use music from Disgaea, and then all I would have to focus on is writing dialogue without having to stop much for descriptions! This also turned out to be a lot more work than I would hope for and couldn't take time away from my other projects for it.

And I kept telling myself I would come back to it one day, again and again and again, and that it'd be fun and great! And maybe it would be, but the truth of the matter is something I've come to realize. I'm probably never going to have the time to come back and work on it or finish, seeing as my future is focusing on so many other projects I'm more passionate about or straight up earn me money. I'm living my dream job making Webcomics full time, so I don't have time to truly dedicate to this silly fanfic that would've been fun to read!

So, instead of never letting this story that people seemed to care about completely die and fade into obscurity, I'm going to write up the entire summary of the story here for you all to see what could have been! And if anyone out there wishes to take up the mantle and write it for yourselves, but all means, please do so! You have my blessing.

That being said, let's get started!

So the very basic idea of the story was that it was going to be a retelling of the first episode of MLP, but with a Disgaea flair to it. 

Twilight was Celestia’s protege, being raised to become the next Overlord should Celestia step down or pass away for any reason. Twilight, of course, took her role seriously and did as much research as she could on what it meant to be an Overlord. 

However, all of her history and research showed that proper Overlord’s were cruel tyrants that ruled their Netherworld’s with iron fists, and Celestia was anything but. She was a seemingly kind and fair ruler who treated all demons with civility and kindness, and made the Netherworld a good place to live.

Unable to reconcile that the history of demons didn’t match up with what the demons currently were like, she set out to ‘rectify’ this mistake with her Dragon assistant Spike by turning herself into an Alicorn-type demon, overthrowing Celestia, and showing her how a PROPER Overlord was supposed to rule.

For this she would need specific ingredients for a ritual to transform herself. So she set out to obtain them. 

Along the way she would run into Rainbow Dash and Applejack, two demons who had been ‘wronger’ by Celestia. Rainbow Dash had been denied admittance into the Wonderbolts because of her recklessness and constant endangerment of others (especially her teammates), and Applejack was upset that Celestia was giving her apples up to charities and Demons in need, making the Apple market plummet and not earn nearly as much money as she could be earning if she was gouging the prices.

Twilight recruited them by promising them that once she was Overlord, she would fix the injustices being foisted upon Demons like them, and that they would go back to being proper demons.

Next on her journey she would encounter Rarity and Fluttershy, two Angels who had been sent to the Netherworld to speak with Celestia about the fact that she was an Overlord who had the same name as the homeworld of the Angels, and were authorized to use deadly force if she would not agree. Having the same name as the Angels homeworld was bad for the reputations of both worlds, and this needed to be rectified and hadn’t been for a thousand years.

Twilight relays to them her plans and they end up agreeing to join her in overthrowing the Overlord for the betterment of both worlds.

And Pinkie is a monster who enjoys to party, finding that Celestia disapproves of her random parties all across the Netherworld because they ‘disturb certain demons’ and she finds that unacceptable. So she joins the party, and the six of them finish the task of collecting the items for the ritual.

And of course all of her new ‘friends/minions’ would have fights with Twilight before being recruited, as is part of the Disgaea brand!

In the original plans, they would have to fight Vinyl Scratch, Lyra and Bon Bon, and Zecora for each of the materials needed for the ritual. The idea was to give Twilight the ‘options’ to peacefully defeat them or kill them, leading to various alternate endings. If Twilight ‘killed’ all of the bosses she encountered she would get the Cruel Tyrant ending, where if she spared all of them she would get the True ending.

Also Trixie was going to be the ‘Midboss’ of the series, where she showed up time and time again to be a rival/boss fight with comedic timing and humor.

So after all these fights and collecting the items, they go through with the ritual and it works! Twilight becomes an Alicorn type demon and she goes out to test her new powers. However, much to her shock, she finds that despite changing ‘types’ of demons, she’s not actually any more powerful than she was before!

Her potential for power has increased (her stats have gone up a few grades) but the time it would take her to grow strong enough to overthrow Celestia would be years, and that’s not acceptable for her. 

So with some more research, a new plan forms. Twilight will summon a creature strong enough to overthrow Celestia, but will be bound to her will! With this plan, her and the girls set out on a journey to free the Mare in the Moon!

And after a short journey, they get to the ancient castle of the two sisters, and they perform a ritual that successfully frees Nightmare Moon. Twilight tries to control her with a preset spell, but Nightmare Moon breaks free and tears through their party easily.

Now free, Nightmare Moon confronts Celestia in her castle, the two talk briefly, before a fight breaks out.

Twilight and her friends desperately race to Celestia’s aid, but must fight through Nightmare Moon’s magical minions. They get to the throne room, but Nightmare Moon is gone and Celestia is lying dying on the floor. She parts on a final message of how to stop Nightmare Moon to Twilight, to collect the Elements of Disharmony, before passing away, leaving Twilight devastated in her wake.

Twilight had never wanted to kill Celestia, just prove to her that she could be an amazing Overlord and show Celestia what it meant to be a true Overlord.

Thus the girls set out on their next quest to collect the Elements of Disharmony, in the hopes of putting a stop to Nightmare Moon.

Each element is in a different location, and each has a different boss. Each one would be related to the Pony its related to, ie. Dash’s Loyalty element would be guarded by a boss depicting either Loyalty or Toxic Loyalty etc and Dash would step up and prove why they’re wrong, paralleling Dash’s growth throughout the fic and showing her growth as a character.

This is the part of the story I had it the least detailed simply because it was something I would detail later, but with the story not being written by me now, I leave it up to your interpretation of how this would play out.

Then the Element of Magic would end up guarded by Nightmare Moon herself, and she would trounce the party and destroy the element and laugh at the heroes. Twilight would step up and show her growth as a character throughout the story, and the element of magic would reform and activate each of the other elements, and empowering Twilight into an ‘ascended alicorn’ state.

One final fight with Nightmare Moon would play out, and with the True ending selected, Twilight would blast Nightmare Moon and leave Luna in her wake. Twilight realizes that Celestia wouldn’t want Luna to be killed for what she’s done, so Twilight orders her to the dungeon for now and they will work on reforming her properly later. 

From there Twilight would take over the throne as Overlord of the Netherworld and become an Overlord closer to what Celestia had envisioned, though taking some cues from her history lessons to make other worlds fear her power as an Overlord, because she will protect her friends and citizens with her very life.

And that would have been the story of Disgaea: Disharmony of Friendship!

And from there I would have thought about fun ‘Post-Game’ epilogue content for the girls to do, like Twilight going out to hunt someone causing trouble and running into characters from the other games like Laharl and Asagi, but also other important characters from FiM like Sunset Shimmer or Starlight Glimmer.

But as I said at the start, this is a story I very much so enjoy thinking about, but don’t have the time or passion to properly write it all out from beginning to end. Especially considering how long it actually would turn out to be.

But by all means! If anyone reading this was inspired to write this story, or your own version of a MLP/Disgaea crossover, by all means go right ahead! I’d love to read it someday too!