More emergent behavior · 5:51pm Nov 9th, 2020
Three-act Play continues to exert a subtle retroactive influence on Virga—or, at least, such influence is revealing itself to me. In this case the influence is on Sunset.
Sunset Shimmer, like Rose Brass, is trying to cope with the wrenching changes in her life and in her friend Wallflower Blush’s life. As mentioned elsewhere, other than an epilogue Three-act Play ends the day Virga begins, so Sunset moves straight from that experience directly to an equally difficult, if very different, adventure.
One of the elements of the latter story I sort of wrote around is how well Sunset copes with (almost) everything that happens. Now, thanks to the former story, I know why she is able to do so: she’s been subjected to a certain amount of tempering and maturing, and is a little more ready to face what Cook describes through a paraphrased quotation as “having a bad time somewhere far away.”
Bouncing around the timeline can lead to all kinds of interesting phenomena. Usually it's dramatic irony, but all kinds of revelations can come to light when the character's future is the author's past.