Director's cut: Why Princess Twilight Doesn’t Need Royal Guards · 4:00am Sep 15th, 2020
First, wow. Did this story blow up! At the time of this blog, Why Princess Twilight Doesn’t Need Royal Guards has a whopping 400 likes and just 14 dislikes. Here I thought my last story with (currently) “just” 128 likes and just four dislikes did great!
With that amazement out of the way, now to the point of this “Director's Cut”.
First, I got the idea for this story from half-jokes I’ve made about Twilight not needing Royal Guards of her own once Starlight Glimmer moved in with her. With Starlight's magic, she’s like a cute one-pony army, and Celestia help you if you piss her off! After thinking about it for the last couple of months, I finally decided to have some fun with that idea in a story.
At first, I planned for just Starlight to clean house, or castle, but soon before I started writing, I thought of the idea to have Spike join in the fun. Going by the comments that LOVED Spike being a badass -- I did too -- adding him in the mix might be the most popular change to a story that I’ve ever made.
Because I thought it would be a little more fitting for Starlight to be extra-protective of Twilight as her student, I had this story happen in season 6. I’ve written a lot of stories with Starlight in them, but it’s actually rare for me to write stories in the season 6 timeline. Most stories, whether Starlight's in them or not, needed to take place in season 7 or beyond.
Now for one of my favorite lines in the whole story: the “Sunset Shimmer” gag line with Locknight. I’ve been WAITING for a chance to use a joke like that for months. This was even the reason why Locknight is bad at getting names new to him right. When he called Starlight “Starset” before he called her “Sunset Shimmer”, it was there to make it more believable that he might call Starlight “Sunset Shimmer” next by mistake. This was also a reason why he called her “Starshine Dimmer”, since “Dimmer” rhymes with “Shimmer”.
Now for the noteworthy cuts and edits to the story. There was quite a bit compared to my other stories.
The first change was to Locknight and Tumble being unicorns. They were earth ponies at first, but I thought it might look even impressive if Spike mopped the floor with two unicorns instead. On a related note, something I thought about after the story was out was for Tumble and/or Locknight to try to attack Starlight with a magic blast, to her face. She would protect herself with a spell to harden her face, and after she took the hit, she would say something like “Ouch. That almost ticked.” Because I thought of it about 2 days ago, it was too late to try to slip that in. Blown chance to have another badass Starlight line.
Anyway, the second change is a cut to Locknight and Tumble walking through Twilight’s castle. At one point, they peeked in the castle’s library and the narration pointed out how the “rumors” of Twilight being a bookworm was a rare rumor to be true. Since the crooks would go on to call Twilight stupid, I took out where they peeked in the library. I felt it would have felt a bit odd for even Locknight to call her “dumb as bricks” after learning she has a personal library.
Next up, there was an edit to the picture in Twilight’s room. At first, it had the whole mane 6, Spike, and Starlight, but Spike was still on Twilight’s back. During editing, I changed it to the picture having just Twilight and Spike. This was done to both make things a bit simpler and act as foreshadowing for Twilight being triggered over Spike riding on Starlight’s back.
The fourth change was to how Tumble laughed at Locknight’s insults to Twilight and Starlight. Originally, he neither laughed nor joined Locknight in calling Twilight dumb. However, it felt like it would have been too much if Starlight still kicked his flank for just being in the castle with a big-mouth Locknight. For that reason, I changed things to have him make fun of her too. He still let it slip that he thought Starlight was a...little wide in the early drafts of the story, though I did emphasize it a bit more in editing.
The fifth change is a cut to something that happened right before Starlight went after Locknight and Tumble. When Locknight asked Starlight if Twilight would want her doing things the “hard way”, Starlight originally said that they should be glad those two are facing her and not Twilight. It was to imply that Twilight would have acted even more aggressively to the crooks taking her book and calling mares “plump”. I later just took it out to shorten things a little.
Next, this isn’t an edit, but when I was first thinking of the story, when the story cut to Twilight at the end, I planned for Twi to be by herself. She would still see Starlight and Spike chasing crooks and still think “this again?” and how she should start putting locks on her castle’s door. Well before I even started writing, I chose to add Rainbow and have it look like Rainbow had just said she had feelings for Twilight. Of course, Rainbow didn’t, but just instead said that she thought Twilight was capable of doing a Sonic Rainboom. This change also gave me the idea to have Twilight get jealous of Spike being on Starlight’s back, then do a Sonic Rainboom to get Spike off ASAP. If I didn’t change things to have Rainbow with Twilight, I doubt I would have thought of the joke of her doing a Rainboom.
The last edit was to before Twilight did her first-ever Rainboom. I'll just show what the part in the final version of the story is, and what it was in the third or so draft. I took at out because I thought it was a bit too much. If this is a more random story, I would have left it in.
Final version
“It’s not that. I gotta get down there because Spike is on Starlight’s back. That’s our thing!”
Third draft
“It’s not that, and we have shovels for if they do. I gotta get down there because Spike is on Starlight’s back. That’s our thing!”
EDIT: I forgot to mention a reference in the story that no one caught and pointed out. Locknight called Tumble "Pingas" was a reference to a Sonic the Hedgehog meme. Locknight talking about how he had egg on his face was a hint that it was a joke about the Pingas meme.
:D great story it deserved all the likes it got
I have to say, it was a very fun story! I really enjoyed it myself so Congratulations!!
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Thanks a lot!
It's comments like those that makes the work I put in worth it!