Writer's Recap: Face Off

This one took a few tries before I could actually figure out the flow of things, because I wasn’t sure how to get Twilight alone with Lyra; that’s one hazard of starting from the end and working backwards. I knew that I wanted to address a few things, though, one of which was, if Lyra is a changeling, then how do we explain the obvious hypnosis at the wedding? That naturally led into, “How is Lyra related to Chrysalis, if at all?”

One of the common themes of the Strangerverse is that the life of a changeling is a life of tragedy, and for the most part, Lyra’s life hasn’t been all that tragic: She grew up in Canterlot and comes from a family that does well, she got into the School for Gifted Unicorns, had great friends, and then moved to Ponyville, where she made more friends, has a girlfriend who loves her very much (even if she does keep secrets, but turnabout is fair play), she makes decent money doing what she likes to do (even if there’s some odd jobs here and there she has to take on), and life is otherwise pretty good. It made sense that the tragedy in her life was more distant and not necessarily about her directly.

This was also going to tie into the main plot line for A Matter of Interest, and it still may, it depends.

The standoff between Bon Bon and Driftwood was actually something I thought up later, and really served as a way to build up the world a bit more while moving the story along. So far, what has been shown of this Equestria has largely not been things that have actually been seen, but has either been mentioned in dialogue or otherwise hinted at but never directly addressed, including a lot of Equestrian culture (and to some extent, changeling culture, although this typically does get explained in dialogue because most of the characters shown are outsiders to this culture).