Director's cut: Caught and Punished, chapters 16 & 17 + a question

First off, chapter 16 was a pain to get to feel right. It even delayed the chapter coming out, since I didn't expect to have so much trouble.

One of the things I had a bit of trouble with was with Starlight being able to tell that changelings had taken the places of ponies in Ponyville. You might think that having a character act odd would be enough. I would say, WRONG!

The canon characters never think "He/she might be a changeling!" when other characters aren't themselves, so that wouldn't work, or at least, not that easily. This is where some unicorns having green magic came in as the way for Starlight to tell, and there's no reason that I know that says that Starlight doesn't know changeling magic is green. This way, it feels more natural for her to do it.

On a related note, an edit I did in chapter 15 can now be brought up. When Pinkie said she saw some ponies with "weird magic", I originally had her say "weird green magic" as foreshadowing the fact that changelings were in Ponyville. I thought her saying the magic was green might be too obvious a clue, so I edited it to have Pinkie say "weird magic". That let it be foreshadowing, but wasn't too obvious.

Moving on. When I thought of this changeling attack part of the story, I planned for Twilight to be free and be part of the rescue mission. This brings me to another thing I had a bit of trouble with: coming up with a valid reason for Twilight to not just be in her castle, but be by herself. At first, she was "simply" going to be there at the castle, but, like that, it felt too convenient. I eventually came up with Twi being at her castle because she was working on reversing the spell that Starlight cast.

Speaking of Twilight, the point about the guilt she felt about Spike and the rest of the mane 6 being caught with her somewhere else, again. That was something I didn't think about doing until I was either about to write this chapter, or soon before it. Her overall role, or the level of focus she got, also was something I thought of as I was writing the chapter, so the attention she got was higher than I originally planned. In fact, this part of the story ended up being something of an atonement moment for Twilight (in her eyes) as well as Starlight. Twilight feeling this way was not something I planned to do, but just happened. On a much larger scale, this happened with Starlight’s role in my “A Giant Adventure to Equestria” (AGATE) story. That, though, was a far bigger impact. Starlight went from giving less screen-time then any of the mane 6, to the story’s deuteragonist. A moderate rewrite could easily make Starlight AGATE’s protagonist, like she is in Caught and Punished.

But back to Caught and Punished. Possibly the toughest part of chapter 16 was figuring out how to bring Thorax in. One idea I had when I reached chapter 13 was to do a big enough time-skip for the events of the episode “The Times They Were a Changeling” to happen in this story, which would have made bringing him in much easier. However, It would have required a time skip of about a year, which I felt was too big a skip to happen at once, so I had to scratch that idea. Another thing I had to figure out was how to get Twilight and even Starlight to believe Thorax; there was no Spike to sing a song to get them to do it this time.

This is where Lyra came in AND this, in itself, solved the problem of how to bring Lyra into the picture. It wouldn’t have made too much sense to have a whole chapter of Sam and Starlight making friends with Lyra, if I never use her much afterward.

Because I wanted Starlight to have access to her magic, I had the changelings take Spike and most of the mane 6 to a gem cave, not the changeling hive. More on why Fluttershy wasn’t there as well later.

Before I get to the edits, here’s a fun fact. Remember the part where Sam said that Rarity doesn’t use slang like “yeah”? In some of my past stories, I actually had Rarity sometimes say “yeah” but later realized that it doesn’t really suit her. There may even be some of my past stories where Rarity says that I never went back on to fix.

Despite the trouble I had with this chapter, there aren’t too many noteworthy edits.

Two noteworthy ones were to Twilight’s explanation about why she couldn’t fight all the changelings by herself, despite being an alicorn. One of the things she originally said was that while she’s very powerful, she isn’t a “warrior.” Unlike a character like Rainbow Dash, who would love to throw down, Twilight doesn’t like fighting, so I thought her saying/thinking she wasn’t a warrior made sense.

That is, until I was re-watching the season 4 finale again and, well...I'll let Twilight herself "tell" you what I mean.

Yeah, Twilight’s not like Son Goku or Vegeta from DBZ/DBS/DBGT and she doesn’t like fighting, but given how she fought Tirek, that “I’m not a warrior” line had to go! Another smaller edit was when she said that she doesn’t like using magic to hurt others. This made sense, but I cut it because I felt it was unnecessary. These kinds of small cuts are common and happen in every story of mine and in every chapter, but they are rarely notable enough to mention.

And now, chapter 17.

Overall, I didn’t have the hard time with chapter 17 as I did in chapter 16. The trickiest part, as you might have guessed, was the narration switch with Starlight narrating instead of Sam.

Starlight narrating this part of the story was something I first wondered about doing when I was in chapter 11 or 12. I didn’t make up my mind until I started writing chapter 17. This marks the first time I tried using first-narration with a canon character.

To be honest, there are only a few canon characters I feel I can truly nail in a first-person narration, but Starlight is one of them.

Similar to the canon Starlight in the season 6 finale, the Starlight in this story was still reeling from something, making things even tougher on her. In the season 6 finale, she was having doubts about how much she’s changed, guilt, not having her magic in the hive, and being scared of being in a leadership role. The Starlight in this story, however, is reeling from messing up with a spell and fighting doubts that she can help with spells. As far as guilt goes, the Starlight at this part of the story isn’t struggling with it like she did in the show, though she still wants to atone. Twilight, on the other hand…

One thing both the season 6 finale Starlight and the Starlight at this point in the story did struggle with is overall confidence.

Also, the part with Starlight using an invisibility spell in the caves. This was an intentional call-back to the prologue, where she tried it, but failed. It was also meant to give her a little confidence boost that she can help with spells. This was something I had long-planned to do.

Since we were talking about spells, let’s talk about teleportation. That can be a very annoying spell when writing stories with crises. No wonder the canon writers sometimes just have Twilight “forget” she can do it! In fact, I was tempted to have Twilight and Starlight both forget, so I wouldn’t have to try to nerf or try to get around it.

But then I thought, “where’s the fun in that?” so I came up with a way to negate teleportation from being able to help AND not make Twilight and Starlight just choose not to do it.

One thing before I get to the edits. When I imagined how this part of the story would go, I planned to have Queen Chrysalis in the cave with the changelings for the start. It was only later that I changed my mind and adjusted it so she wasn’t, but as part of a plan to catch Twilight.

And now for chapter 17’s noteworthy edits, the first was when Twilight confessed the guilt she was feeling, since I only left hints about in chapter 16. This wasn’t there at first. Originally, when Sam suggested being bait, Twilight protested as she did in the final version, but didn’t let it slip that there was more on her mind. Lyra then went on to say, right away, that Twilight and Starlight running in might be a bad idea and backed up Sam’s idea. 

The second, and by far the biggest change: where the chapter ended. Originally, it ended when Twilight and Starlight ran into the chamber holding 4 of the mane 6, Spike, and the ponies that “saw too much” were held.

I didn’t feel that enough happened to end the chapter at that point, so I continued to where it ended for real. I'm GLAD I did, or chapter 18 would have been an even bigger nightmare, since it was 7,300 words as it is. Trying to edit a 9,000+ word chapter isn't something I would want to do if it's not needed. Even chapters around 5,500 words can be rough on me.

The third edit is about Fluttershy. Initially, she was trapped with the rest of the mane 6 too, but before long, I thought that it wouldn’t work. Discord can be “hands off” when it comes to helping the mane 6, most notably by far in the season 9 premiere. However. If the changelings went after Fluttershy, I don’t see him sitting back and watching, even if Twilight was still free. I could have tried to have it that he just didn’t know what was going on. That could possibly check out, but it didn’t feel like it was good enough. This is where the idea that the changelings got Fluttershy, took her to the changeling hive in time for them to lure and trap Discord there came in to get him out of the story.

It doesn’t seem like even the canon writers of the show could figure out what to do with Discord that wasn’t either having him lose his magic, or just not have him in finales at all. 

Anyway, now for that question. I would say that the three-chapter experiment of Starlight narrating the story is an overall success, and chapter 19 will be the 3rd and last chapter of the experiment. So, the question is, would you like for Starlight to keep narrating the story in chapter 20 onward, or would you rather it go back to Sam in chapter 20?

And before I forget: I BET that no one expected Lyra Heartstrings to be part of a rescue mission if the changelings appeared in this story! I didn’t even slip in any foreshadow that it might happen

And lastly, if you didn’t figure it out: in chapter 17, here’s how Lyra picked up the idea about using how the rocks in the cave looked to know where to go.

She learned it from Bon Bon, AKA Secret Agent Sweetie Drops, from “Bon Bon’s” stories of her work as a secret agent. Yes, “Slice of Life” happened during the two-month time-skip in chapter 13. This is also why Lyra didn’t think Twilight and Starlight running into the chamber with the changelings on their own wasn’t the best idea: The stories from her “best friend” told her that.