• Member Since 27th Jul, 2011
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Andrew Joshua Talon


A fellow traveler...

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Jan
18th
2020

Plot Bunny Theater: Equestria: Civil War · 5:00pm Jan 18th, 2020

Chrysalis seeks redemption. Twilight Sparkle is willing to help her, but Shining and Cadence are against it. And as it turns out, Chrysalis is using this proximity to manipulate everypony involved. But they don't find this out until Shining and Twilight are taking up arms against one another in actual civil war. The sad thing is, she's not putting thoughts into ponies' heads: She's just enhancing what ponies keep hidden inside themselves. And even after defeating her, there's still a lot of wounds to heal.

The idea naturally needs more work, but it seemed intriguing enough to share.

Comments ( 4 )

That would need work. But it is an interesting idea, have Chryssi play to all parties, then rip the carpet out from underfoot

Would probably be even more interesting if she actually was sincere about wanting to be redeemed, but the scope of her crimes are just too great to ever ignore.

Hmm... well, it's not a bad idea, but (and this may or may not have direct relevance to this idea, but it is brought to mind by it) I've always been iffy on the idea of "I wasn't controlling you, I was just taking away your inhibitions [and/or] enhancing your urges". Since, well, those inhibitions are just as much a part of you as the urges are, so taking them away is just as much mind alteration as taking away the urges would be. Similarly, whether or not you already had some such urges doesn't change the fact that it was the manipulator that changed the person enough for them to be overwhelmed by those urges and, as such, they are still one hundred percent responsible for it. Just because you're not putting anything new into their heads doesn't mean you aren't controlling them.

Of course, this is not to say this is a bad idea, far from it. Nor is it to say that such manipulation wouldn't be even more scarring than the regular kind (which is already a high bar). It's simply that I don't think there's anything "just" about enhancing or diminishing what's already there.

I was actually daydreaming an inversion of this: imagine an AU where instead of replacing Cadence, Chrysalis was quietly aided by Cadence to ensure the changelings had enough love to live on, and once the Crystal Empire was safe, the changelings moved north. You'd wind up with something like the Mirror Universe Chrysalis and changelings (no holes) working with the Princess of Love to spread love across Equestria and feed the kids.

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Of course, Twi/Luna/Celestia just aren't having any of this. There's changelings popping up all over Equestria, they're being fed from the Crystal Heart and the love everywhere, ponies are behaving differently, Cadence is doing her own thing running her own Empire and isn't listening to what Auntie says anymore, Shining Armor is entirely too happy with the situation... so Equestria starts preparing for war.

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