Concepts & Creations: Needs of the Few · 7:15pm Mar 7th, 2021
First off, apologies if the image is too big. The server I usually use for my images is apparently down, so I wasn't able to upload the resized version.
So. This time we're hitting a very old story that I honestly forgot all about until sometime last week when I spotted it buried in my old brainstorming folders. I recalled it fondly and decided it deserved at least a proper sendoff. The story was intended as a reaction to what I consider the low point of the show: Twilight's Kingdom and, more specifically, the lesson it tried to instill in today's children.
The story begins with Princess Twilight receiving a visit from Applejack with bad news: Granny Smith is dead. In the midst of trying to comfort the distraught mare, Twilight is eventually pulled to the local hospital. There she learns that some unknown epidemic is striking all the young and oldest ponies in Ponyville, who all seem to be dying of a wasting sickness. Determined to get to the bottom of this, Twilight does her Twilight things and begins her studies.
A few weeks pass. More and more ponies are dying. The sickness, which originally only targeted the very old or very young, is starting to effect more robust, healthier age groups. Worse, there aren't any physical symptoms beyond a steadily worsening lethargy, like the victims are gradually being drained of their energy. At first, Twilight suspects the changelings might have found a way to feast on something other than love, or that maybe Tirek's magic has some dangerous after-effects. The only ponies in Ponyville who seem unaffected are, in fact, Twilight and her friends. And the effects are gradually starting to spread beyond Ponyville.
Eventually, Twilight devises a way to track where the 'energy' of the ponies is going. To her surprise, it's going straight to the Castle of Friendship. And now that she looks,the castle does appear brighter and more luxurious than it did when she first moved in...
At last, Twilight discovers the first truth: the Castle of Friendship is essentially a giant magical battery. When the Mane 6 used the Rainbow Power to defeat Tirek, the battery was depleted, so now it is recharging itself using whatever source of energy is in close proximity. Generally speaking, the living. Twilight is understandably horrified, but there's still open big question: why aren't she and her friends being affected by it? Ponyville is evacuated while she continues her study.
After much more research, Twilight comes upon the second truth: she did this. The keys she and her friends used to activate the Crystal Box and bring about the Rainbow Power didn't just unlock the power to begin with, but also gave it its defining characteristics. The lessons learned to earn the keys became instilled in the Castle of Friendship, and each key contributes in some way to the Castle's and the power's behavior.
Twilight's key was earned with the lesson: "The needs of the few outweigh the needs of the many." And she's represents Magic, the keystone of the underlying 'structure'. The castle needs to recharge. It has, theoretically, an infinite reservoir. It only cares about keeping Twilight and her friends alive, and all others are expendable. The castle is doing exactly what it was programmed to do: sacrifice everyone and everything in exchange for keeping the Mane 6 alive forever.
From here, the story skips time by years, then decades, then centuries. The land around the castle becomes barren and empty, with the ring of death always spreading further. The region is evacuated entirely, including Twilight's friends. But Twilight stays behind, determined to find a way to stop the Castle before it can wipe out all life in the world. She doesn't age, doesn't grow tired, doesn't need food. The castle provides all. Her friends, having moved beyond the castle's growing influence, do age. They sometimes visit Twilight in hopes of convincing her to leave and rejoin the world, if only for a little bit, and not be so hard on herself. She refuses, drowning herself in her work, and her friends die off one at a time while she is stuck in the castle studying.
At the end of the story, nearly a thousand years have passed. Nearly half the world is dead and there are no sign that the Castle's going to stop. Twilight sends a message to her last living friend other than the princesses, Spike, asking him to come visit. She explains to him that she knows how to stop the Castle's seemingly endless destruction. It was created to preserve the lives of the Mane 6. If the Mane 6 are dead, then it will have failed its purpose and shut itself down, waiting for someone else to come along and give it a new purpose.
Twilight may be an immortal alicorn, but that doesn't mean she can't die. With a reluctant Spike at her side, she travels beyond the current limits of the Castle's power and commits suicide. True to her word, the castle instantly goes inert. Over time, life returns to the barren, dead lands sucked dry by its magic.
When I first tried to write this, I only intended it to be around 10,000 - 15,000 words. I quickly realized I'd want to make it bigger if it was to be done justice, and at the time I had too many big projects to start yet another one. In reality,this probably would have been around 30,000 words had I actually written it. I imagine it would have been at least a little controversial, what with its ardent denial of Twilight's decisions in Twilight's Kingdom.
One big question I never got around to answering was "what about the other keys?" The rest of her friends contributed to the box being opened, which means the lessons they learned also determined the Castle's behavior. Were their lessons also interpreted in catastrophic ways, or only Twilight's? That part might have been fun to explore.
Alas, this is one I've more-or-less concluded won't get written. Too many projects, too much to do, not enough motivation. But I still like the overarching idea as a sadfic.
Still got a few more of these to go, folks. The next one is big enough I'll have to release it in multiple parts.
I always knew there was a reason I hated that crystalline abomination...
Twilight's Kingdom has always been my favorite season finale but this would still be something I'd have absolutely loved the chance to read. Thanks for sharing it anyway!
I never got the impression that there was a "lesson" behind Twilight's Kingdom, or at least not one any more complex than "the power is inside you" or whatever; by Season 4 I had come to see the show's most didactic days as behind it. In retrospect that's not exactly true, since all the "key" episodes had a very didactic component, but it still didn't stand out to me nearly as much as the friendship lessons in earlier seasons while I was watching the show. I did think that the Rainbow Power was a cheap deus ex machina cop-out, but more in terms of the logical progression of events in the episode and its pacing/arc, not any particular moral implication or failing.
All that said, while I would never in a million years have particularly asked for or wanted a story about the Palace of Harmony (or whatever it's called) slowly barrenforming Equestria due to a buggy utility function, now that the idea has been presented it sounds pretty cool. It's tragic without being mopey, and exists almost completely to explore these relatively abstract ideas in a fitting sense of scale. Really more than anything the concept and the way you present it here make me think of ultrapure, expansive speculative fiction stories like Death's End or Rendezvous with Rama, which are very minimalist in just focusing on their one central idea (or, in Death's End's case, a lot of ideas) and thus very effective at exploring it.
Wow if you wrote this story i would immediately have hit the like button after reading it and probably have favorited the story. That would've been a chilling but great story in my opinion
So you subscribe to one of those utilitarian, needs-of-the-many-outweigh-the-needs-of-the-few philosophies? Consider this:
A tragic disaster strikes and kills off the majority of the human population, with only 500 people left. These last remnants of humanity split off into two ships and start sailing: 200 in one ship and 300 in the other. Suddenly, holes open up in both ships simultaneously, causing them to sink, and you are the only one who can fix it (assume you're the only one who knows how to do it). But you only have time to fix one. Which do you pick?
"The ship with the 300, obviously."
But the ship with the 200 capture you, demanding that you fix their ship first. They're very persistent and won't let you leave no matter what. Because you believe the needs of the many always outweigh the needs of the few, you do the logical thing: you kill all 200 people on the ship who are holding you hostage. Then you go and fix the ship with the 300.
Then that ship you saved splits off into two more ships: one with 200 and the other with 100. Same thing: holes open up in both ships. You can only save one. The 100 people capture you. You kill them all to escape, then you fix the ship with 200.
Congratulations. You just killed 300 people in order to save 200. Rinse and repeat till you're the only one left.
Yikes. That's bleak.
Sounds like a variation to the Grey Goo scenario or the paper clip conundrum.
This could have been that sandblasted timeline Twilight and Starlight ended up in the season 5 finale.
Between this and Trixie VS Equestria, you seem to have a knack for Twilight creating the worst possible scenario. That mare needs to be stopped!
An intriguing concept, but not one I'd especially want to read.
5469881
I think a better moral to extract from this kind of thought experiment would be "ridiculous situations can cause people to behave ridiculously", or perhaps "without perfect knowledge of the future, reasonable decisions can still result in the opposite of what you wanted happening".
5469900
I suppose so. You can say that about any moralistic thought experiment. Every thought experiment is non-empirical and ridiculous to some degree (broken window parable, utilitarian monster, trolley problem, schrodinger's cat, etc), including the stories we all write to prove our points.
This seems, uh, really freaking dark. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing, you tend to do heavy topics justice. However, I feel like there are numerous plot holes inherent in this premise. Why would Harmony be so mechanically cruel when it never acts that way at any other time? Why does it take Twilight so long to figure out that the artifact that sucks up life energy as juice for her and her friends would shut off without them being around? Why not just destroy the castle in the meantime? Or why not have the mane six sever their connection to it altogether by letting Discord grey them out again?
I'd argue that last one more effectively gets across the point you're trying to make while also being a better conclusion overall. Our heroines would basically have to sacrifice themselves to save everypony else, as their inverted natures are effectively different ponies. All their friends and relatives would have to recon with their loss. Discord would be especially pained, as it was his fault they needed to open the chest in the first place since he worked with Tirek. Also Celestia, since she groomed Twilight for ascension, and now her former student is cursed with endless depression, unable to even die to escape her loneliness. Heck, if I didn't have an in-progress novel and like four other planned projects I might've jumped in to write it myself.
5469853
Besides it being butt-ugly, you mean? I'd take a cozy library tree over most palaces, anyway.
5469853
5470066
I do miss the Golden Oaks...
5469871
In all fairness, if in the end the message wasn't the one-two punch of "killing an entire nation is worth saving a handful of people" and "abandon everything that gives you a fighting chance and bend over; no worries, everything will be fine because you chose not to fight back", I probably would have loved Twilight's Kingdom. Everything else about it was fun, if profoundly dumb ("Let's all just ignore that stained glass window in the throne room depicting Twilight's coronation! Tirek won't notice.")
But once my frustration at the finale's message passed, however, I was still interested in this idea. If there's anything I enjoy, it's exploring new concepts. Yeah, it was dark, but I tend to thrive on that kind of material. It fascinates me.
5469881
That example is ridiculous in a profound way. 200 lives vs. 300 lives is not the same as millions against seven. That's not even a comparison. Worse, you're repainting a moral decision into murder, as if that somehow makes any sense. I mean, yes, any story that acts as a thought experiment may be nonsensical, but "you've decided to personally murder 200 people so you can go and save 300" is in an entirely different league from "my decision had unintended consequences".
5469884
Twilight's simply the easiest target for these kinds of things. TvE's scenario is at least partially based on her willingness to learn and catalogue and know, except without consideration of the risks. It's based on her character and taking some liberties.
Needs of the Few, on the other hand, would have been a message on the foolishness of her canon actions. I like to think they're different types of story.
5470018
I have no answers to these criticisms. The story never really moved past the conceptual stage, aside from an attempted rough draft at a first chapter. Some of these problems may have been addressed, but probably not all of them. I simply didn't explore the idea for long enough to address them, assuming they even occurred to me (although a few did).
5470384
Whether it’s 200 vs 300 or a million vs 1, the math is still the same. You can keep sacrificing the few for the many until the amount you’ve sacrificed adds up to more than you’ve saved; the latter would simply take longer to reach that point than the former. Killing a few to save many is just the logical consequence of putting the needs of one over the other. You could always add an exception, like, “The lives of the many outweigh the lives of the few, unless I myself have to end those lives, in which case screw the many.”
But even if you want to replace murder with “letting them die but not getting directly/personally involved,” you still get the same results, wouldn’t you? Let 200 die to save 300; now let 100 of those die to save the other 200; and so on. Seeing as how Twilight had no way to defeat Tirek herself, I imagine letting him kill her friends would eventually result in everyone dead except for them.
You may be right in calling this ridiculous. But at the same time, this is just a more elaborate version of the trolley problem.
Keep in mind that I’m not trying to change your mind. I personally don’t agree with some of the stuff I’ve just written. I’m just playing devil’s advocate.
5470445
Your argument assumes that there will continuously, endlessly be scenarios forcing you to sacrifice people again and again and again until everyone is dead. Most people never have to face one of these sorts of situations at all, and yet here we're suggesting it happens every day, or at least at a common enough rate that the natural reproduction of the species can't keep up. At that point the choice doesn't matter in the first place because either one results in the demise of all humanity. The fact we're having this conversation automatically renders the suggestion moot.
5470381
Oh, you're talking about Twilight's decision to surrender when Tirek threatens her friends. Yeah, I can understand how that'd have some weird implications viewed in a moral light, especially when the rest of the episode (and really all of Season 4) explored a completely different and more mature theme: Twilight Sparkle is the designated survivor. She's been chosen, without ever volunteering, to serve as a receptacle for the remaining magic in Equestria. Her life is worth more than anypony else's now, including her friends', and that fact is tearing her up.
The fact that she keeps up that job when it's her versus Royal Guard #57,482, or her versus the population of Canterlot, or even her versus Shining Armor or her versus the other Princesses, but not her versus her friends then does come across as kind of suspect. However, I for one saw this as a reasonable, if unheroic reaction on Twilight's part; after so many failed attempts to stop Tirek, and having so many ponies she cares about suffer for her sake, she's fresh out of morale points and gives up.
I can see how then having the Rainbow Power materialize anyway would look like that failing was being rewarded, although again I saw them as two disconnected events on either side of a logical break in the plot. Everything up to and including Twilight surrendering is a perfectly fine depiction of Tirek as this completely unstoppable force, contingency after contingency collapsing before him until at the end there's nothing left; albeit one so complete and "rocks fall, everyone dies" that there's no heroic last stand or reflection on the significance of what was lost at the end of it, like one usually expects from a more conventional tragedy. Then the Rainbow Power happens more or less from nowhere and suddenly everything is fine, like the writers suddenly remembered they had another season after this one and couldn't actually eliminate their entire universe with zero hope of recovery.
I don't think either the moralistic or logical interpretation of the Rainbow Power is inherently more correct over the other, so much as both are sensible reactions to a contradiction in the underlying episode. You tried to connect the Rainbow Power to Twilight's actions causally, and discovered that leads to an uncomfortable moralizing interpretation; I just gave up on thinking about that part of the story in terms of meaning anything or making sense. Interestingly, it seems like the "entire episode is a well-written apocalyptic tragedy based on Twilight's inability to follow through on her designated survivor shtick, and then for some reason it doesn't end when the world should have ended" interpretation also works with the original "Tree out of control" story you outlined above just as well.
Due to dismissing it as nonsensical when I actually watched Twilight's Kingdom, I never much thought about that plot point beforehand, but now I am wondering about how I should handle it when I eventually get around to rewriting the episode. I think it would be best to just skip over it entirely. There is just so much logical weirdness surrounding it (this being an Extended Cut story Tirek is fully capable of outright killing ponies; why would he not recognize Twilight to still be a threat and kill her after she turned over her magic, and for that matter why would Twilight assume he'd keep his end of the bargain in the first place and not just kill her and her friends anyway?). Additionally, I don't think exacting surrender from Twilight, personally, adds much to the scale of Tirek as a threat after he's already conquered the entire nation of Equestria, sent the Princesses to Tartarus, and forced Twilight into hiding/exile as part of a scorched-earth tactic by the Equestrian government. Instead, Twilight opens the box first, acquires from it the ability to nullify Tirek's magic drain (which has previously been literally unstoppable) and nothing else, and the fights Tirek spell-for-spell and wins.
5470381
As much as I wouldn't want to read a 30,000 word middle finger to the MLP writers, I agree about Twilight's choice being objectively terrible. This is one of the biggest traps of writing down for children. When you simplify morality for the sake of "clarity," you often end up inadvertently teaching a very bad lesson, and little four-year-old Suzy tells Grandpa that he's fat, ugly, and smells bad because "Never Tell a Lie" was hammered into her impressionable mind without caveats and amplification. There have been a number of times that MLP has hit this speedbump.
Getting back to Twilight, I would much rather read a story about her making a better decision. It wouldn't be easy, because she was faced with a pretty horrible choice in a lose-lose situation. There is a long accepted best response to hostage-taking and/or blackmail, but it's too complex and ruthless for the show. That doesn't mean I wouldn't like to read a story about it, here where we can easily do complex and ruthless. I even wonder if there is some way to translate it to a show-style level of simplicity and tone. Low-stakes blackmail might be an easier subject to use for conveying the lesson that giving in to such always puts you in a worse situation in the long run. (Unless you have the show writers on your side, that is.)
5470462
You’re certainly right, what I’m saying does rely on unlikely assumptions.
Still, I have to wonder how you imagine the Tirek fight going down if Twilight sacrificed her friends just to hold onto all the alicorn magic. It’s not as if she had any chance of beating him. They were just wrecking the place around them. She would just be pointlessly extending their fight for nothing.
5470606
Actually, we don't know that. Tirek said it, but that doesn't make it true. Twilight simply chose to agree. There were plenty of other options, the best being to take her friends to safety the instant they were freed from Tirek's control, go into hiding, and learn how to better control the combined might of the princesses. Tirek was a warhammer, all he knew how to do was blow things up, and there's no indication at all that he was a scholar of any sort. Twilight comes back in a year, the master of her powers and maybe with a few extra, and schools Tirek, who is still nothing more than a warhammer.
At least, that's how I see things going down in the same scenario. I'm sure there are a ton of different interpretations and argument against this, not least of which is Tirek going to steal the magic from races other than ponies to grow even stronger. But Twilight is smart enough to find a way to deal with a particularly powerful opponent, especially if said opponent's only real gimmick is EPIC LAZERZ.
5470632
How would she take her friends away to safety? I assume you mean she would teleport them all away the moment she had the chance, but how do you know she'd be able to do that? Like you said, she had bad control of her powers, she could barely teleport herself to the right place just a minute before, so how would she teleport them all way together to some distant location instantly with such bad control of her powers? Could be the reason she didn't do that was because she literally couldn't, even if she wanted to. And even if she did manage to teleport away with her friends, what makes you think Tirek would just leave her alone to practice her powers? We clearly saw in the episode that he can locate her almost instantly (probably because he had Discord's magic), and that he was desperate to suck out her magic as soon as possible. So it'd just be a cat-and-mouse game where Twilight keeps teleporting her and her friends away with Tirek being right on top of them constantly. And because Twilight is the one carrying a bunch of baggage, her margin for error is far greater the longer this goes on. Given the fact that Twilight is both very smart and agreed with Tirek that they were at an impasse (we saw the fight for ourselves, they were doing no damage to each other), it could be that she knew there was no beating him.
5470646
Twilight was struggling to teleport at first, but if I recall correctly she mastered it in no time Iit is one of her trademark talents, after all), which further lends credence to the whole "she could get better and come back to kick his ass" angle. And since Tirek does release all her friends before trying to take her magic, she definitely had the time to do it. As for Tirek following her and using Discords powers, not a chance. We never once see him actually try to use Discord's brand of magic or teleport, which also lends credence to the idea that he's not some scholar or natural whiz at magical theory. And even if he knows where she is, given that he can't seem to adapt his magic to anything other than basic levitation and EPIC LAZERZ, she only needs to teleport a very long distance whenever she sees his giant, red, stands-out-like-a-sore-thiumb-thile-his-steps-cause-earthquakes person approaching. Or better yet, figure out the necessary survival tricks and move to the moon for a few months.
Point is, she had options, and she's shown in the past that she's creative, intelligent, and resourceful enough to make use of them.
5470662
Dude, just watch the scene starting at 0:12 to 0:25.
Despite her teleporting everywhere across Equestria at random, he instantly knew where she was and was there to greet her, while in just the scene before he was all the way back in Canterlot. And seeing as how he's absorbed the magic of every pegasus, I'd imagine that he's pretty damn fast, like when he threw her into the mountain and crossed the distance in a second. Remember, they're equal in power, as was both explicitly shown and stated; how is she gonna get the chance to practice (for a whole year by your own admission) while avoiding him and teleporting her friends all the time? And wouldn't they have to stop to eat or rest? I'm not even reading in between the lines or making any wild assumptions, this is all clearly spelt out in the episode. Twilight is smart, but her magically coming up with ways to survive on the moon while permanently avoiding him and always keeping her friends safe and never slipping up once is just mary-sue levels of nonsense.
5470709
I notice that she handled those teleports perfectly after the first few screwups.
We don't actually know that he knew she was in that rock. He's a giant, his voice will obviously carry for a long ways, and we distinctly see her fly to him, not the other way around. Nor do we know that he was able to target her at the library because of any inherent magical sense; if Twilight's first instinct is to grab her telescope to spy on him, then she was in a position where he could see the visual effects of her coming out a teleport and know where she is that way. There is nothing in that scene that can't be explained away with a little non-magical logic (EPIC LAZERZ, levitation, and cross-country leaping aside).
5470731
Bruh, what do you mean?!? Equestria is a whole freaking country. Judging by the background scenery and how close she was to him in the next few frames, they were clearly in the same location. You really gonna tell me he just coincidentally happened to be where she was? He knew exactly where she was. And I don't think he saw the visual of her de-teleporting. When she reappears and takes a second to look into her telescope, well after that teleportation visual is gone, he was still looking away. Then he instantly looks at her and fires away.
I just realized something else. When he snapped his fingers and had her friends appear in those bubbles next to him, that was a clear display of teleportation, meaning he could at least teleport others to him from a distance. Even if she gets her friends away, can't he just snap his fingers and make them teleport back to him? We saw no indication of any kind of limit on this ability. Her friends was just the beginning, he could hold all of Equestria hostage. Hold her parents, brother, Cadence, Luna, and Celestia all hostage, except this time we won't trust her and demand to be given the alicorn magic first.
5470745
I can already see that you're dead set on "it was the only way", so I think this'll be my last counter. Not gonna go into the topic of Twilight teleporting from right in front of Tirek to a location in his peripheral vision.
As to her friends, it's one thing to teleport someone who is already imprisoned in a location you are well aware of to yourself, it's another thing entirely to teleport them to you when you have no idea where they are. Of course it was easy to grab Twilight's friends, they were all right where he left them.
As for trying to sacrifice anypony Twilight knows or, for that matter, anypony at all, I doubt Tirek would see the point if Twilight's not actually there for him to make his demands to. Again, Twilight can see him coming from miles away on account of how big and noisy he is – there's no point in leaping half the country if you don't know where you're leaping to – so she can easily avoid him. What's the point of declaring you'll hurt/kill someone if they aren't there to hear the threat?
Also: at no point whatsoever does Tirek actually cause any physical pain to anyone outside of a fight. The most he's ever done is drain ponies' magic. He had a ton of opportunities to prove his vicious nature, but he never did. Are we even sure that Tirek would carry out any such threats?
Beyond that, Tirek's bound to know that Twilight will be determined to save her kingdom. He doesn't have to hunt her down, she'll come to him! It might take time, but she would. And in the meantime he's free to rule Equestria and steal magic from the other races to get even stronger. We've seen that in Tirek's mind might is the only thing that matters, so this would be the most obvious path for him were Twilight to 'disappear'.
5470828
We’ve been over this. He constantly knows where she is and he’s extremely fast, given all the evidence presented in the episode. How will she “easily avoid him”? There’s also your claim that Tirek only knows how to use lasers and telekinesis or won’t improve at a faster rate than her. He clearly knows other spells, such as snapping her friends to him, or opening portals to Tartarus, or melting that stained glass window, or sucking magic from every race. Tirek actually displayed a greater range of spells this season finale than Twilight. I have like a million other objections, like what kind of training would allow Twilight to beat the guy who got nuked and survived without the faintest scratch, but I’ll leave it at that.
Well yeah, this is a little girl’s show. Of course they’re not going to show death. But in the realm of fan fiction we’re not bound by age restrictions, that’s why the T and M tags exist. Realistically we all know Tirek would be killing at least some of them.
Come on. You’re making stuff up here. Tirek was focused solely on retrieving the alicorn magic from what we’ve seen in that conflict and nothing else. Claiming that he’d just let it go is impossible to prove, not to mention it’s purposefully dumbing him down just to give Twilight the advantage. Tirek was portrayed as a lot more cunning than you’re giving him credit for.
It’s not that I’m dead set on this. I’m basing everything I’m saying on what we’re shown in the episode while trying to avoid any far-reaching or impossible-to-prove assumptions. Meghan McCarthy clearly wrote Tirek with the intent that he’s unbeatable (save for that friendship box). I’m not the one who’s bending the plot to Twilight’s will so that she can get a power up and defeat him.