My stories, a look back - #11: Starlight Saves Equestria With Custard

Now we get to my first fic of 2021, which you'd think I should remember reasonably well, but yet again this one was created in an anxiety-driven 10-hour marathon session during which I forgot to eat, so the details are a bit fuzzy.

Yet again, we are back to fics based on other people's fics. I guess that's kind of officially my thing by now? For this one, we visit a realm known as the Custardverse, started by my good friend Loganberry in 2015 with the legendary Starlight Repeatedly Teleports Into Custard.

As the title of that fic eloquently summarizes, the story is about Starlight Glimmer, who is afflicted by a supernatural tendency to land in custard every time she attempts teleportation. And that's it, that's the plot. The fic is held in great esteem among our group of UK and Ireland bronies, and its infamy is such that it has garnered a few spin-off tales over the years, expanding into what we now call the Custardverse.

I had long yearned to make my own Custardverse entry, and had secretly played around with various ideas over the years, but never quite managed to come up with anything concrete. But, in early 2021 with April Fools Day approaching, I needed something suitably silly to post, so I had another crack at it. And this time... I struck paydirt.

It was the title that did it. "Starlight Saves Equestria With Custard". As soon as I thought of it, I knew straight away that I had something. This was the perfect hook - an enigmatic title that captures the spirit of the original, yet completely turns it on its head, from magical mystery to a triumphant heroic tale.

The idea crystallized rapidly from that initial seed, and before long, I'd pretty much got the story figured out. Thus, on 1st April, I got to writing with the intention of finishing and publishing it that day, but it took me past midnight to finish so it came out on 2nd April instead.

Which is good, because it meant people could take my story about custard completely seriously.

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Starlight Saves Equestria With Custard
Custard was the bane of Starlight's existence. Now, it's her last hope.
April 2021
Comedy, Drama, Thriller

The story opens in the Map Room of the Castle of Friendship, in which Starlight is monologuing to a bowl of custard. I knew that I wanted to open the story with the reader largely in the dark, because this is sort of a mystery thriller and it's important to keep the reader on their toes when custard is involved.

Starlight, we quickly learn, is afraid, angry, and conflicted - all normal emotions for her to feel around custard, for sure, but at the same time, something seems off. The story slowly drops pieces of the puzzle throughout the opening: the custard is the only bowl left, Ponyville is mysteriously empty, Starlight is deathly afraid... everything points to something being very wrong, something that Starlight is apparently preparing to fix.

She activates the Map, ending the teaser, and shortly, Twilight teleports in. But it's not the princess you were expecting, because Twilight has gone full Nightmare Sparkle and is kind of busy being an existential threat to Equestria right now.

I wanted Twilight as the villain for a few reasons. Firstly, as this fic is a thematic reversal of Starlight Repeatedly Teleports Into Custard, so too is Twilight a reversal of herself from Loganberry's original fics. In those, Twilight takes the mentor role, the one who guides Starlight through her custard tribulations - and so, here, she is the antagonist to be overcome.

Secondly... I've just always really wanted to see Nightmare Sparkle, and this gave me a great opportunity to make her real. At the same time, it also gave me the opportunity to explore a headcanon that I've long held about alicorns. It's my theory that Nightmares and alicorns are two sides of the same coin - that is to say, every alicorn has a Nightmare inside them, the darker version of themself that they must learn to keep under control. We've seen Luna's, of course, and the show hinted at Celestia's being Daybreaker.

The Nightmare represents the worst aspects of one's character given form, so Nightmare Moon is a manifestation of Luna's jealousy and rage, while Daybreaker represents Celestia's megalomania and sadism.

But Twilight? The Princess of Friendship? What darkness could she possibly have within her that could manifest as a Nightmare? The answer was already kind of given to us in Friendship Games: order and control. Twilight doesn't want to destroy the world. She wants to understand it. To catalogue it. And that'd be much easier if everycreature would just, you know, stop what they're doing and submit to her. Hence, Nightmare Sparkle. Unlike previous Nightmares, she's not interested in destruction or misery, but she's also not interested in whatever it is that you thought you ought to be doing.

I based Nightmare Sparkle's physical appearance on Midnight Sparkle from Friendship Games - she's basically just the pony version of that. Here's a picture that's close to what I envisioned:

Anyway, back to the story. Twilight congratulates Starlight on her clever plan, intimating that it hasn't worked. This was an intentional bit of misdirection aimed at the reader, in an attempt to disguise the big plot twist that happens later.

See, Starlight's real plan involves her getting herself deliberately captured by Twilight. However - as firmly established by now in my stories - Twilight is an extremely difficult pony to fool. If Starlight simply gives herself up, Twilight will immediately suspect a trap - so Starlight has had to come up with a plan that is just clever and desperate enough to convince Twilight of its authenticity, but not so clever that Twilight can't thwart it.

The fic doesn't fully explain what Twilight thought the plan was, but it's this: Twilight believes that Starlight was trying to use her connection to the Map to track her, maybe even to weaponize it against her. That's why she mentions that she severed the Map connection - Twilight anticipated that someone would try to do exactly what Starlight did, and took precautions.

And as a side effect, triggering the Map meant that Twilight now knew exactly where to find Starlight. Which, of course, was also part of Starlight's plan.

With both of them now in the room, Twilight knows Starlight can't escape, and she knows Starlight knows that too, so they're able to have a cordial conversation. It was important for me to show that Twilight, even Nightmare-ified, is not really evil as such. She is, after all, the Princess of Friendship - she's just a bit corrupted. Friendship gone wrong. Twilight cares for Starlight, and she wants her to come willingly, so she spends a lot of time trying to soothe and convince her.

It's shortly explained what Twilight has been up to, and we get the reveal on what's happened to Equestria: Twilight has been collecting up every sentient creature on the planet and magically trapping them in books, to create some kind of insane library.

I really love the way the whole evil library plan came together. It ties everything together - I needed an extradimensional realm for Twilight, plus a threat that could waylay the entirety of Equestria - a magic library not only accomplishes those, it also fits perfectly as a motivation for an evil Twilight and it fits with canon because we've seen Twilight use the Haycart's Method spell! It just all fit together so perfectly.

At this point, Twilight notices the custard, because this is a Custardverse fic and we can't forget why we're here. There's a tense moment as Twilight correctly notes that this seems a bit off - given Starlight's tumultuous history with custard, seeing her with a bowl of it feels out of place to her.

Starlight, however, quickly bluffs her way out and distracts Twilight by mentioning that it was "cooked with nirik fire". The nirik fire was originally just a detail that I threw in because I wanted to appease the kirin fans in our group, but I realized I could use that to actually get a kirin involved in the plot, which we'll see shortly.

Twilight takes it as an accidental revelation that there are still more kirin for her to round up, which distracts her from the custard for a moment, but Starlight takes the opportunity to follow up with a curveball by asking about Spike. As Friendship Games showed, Spike is Twilight's biggest weakness - she cares so much for him that the possibility of causing him distress or harm can push back even the Nightmare at full strength. Thus, Twilight is temporarily caught off-guard by this sudden line of questioning. She quickly recovers, however, and her goodwill for Starlight drops significantly.

Twilight tries one more time to convince Starlight to come willingly, but she ain't having it, so Twilight resigns herself to capturing her by force. However - dun dun dun - Starlight springs a trap! The one and only Autumn Blaze comes out of hiding and throws a sudoku puzzle at Twilight. I needed some kind of weakness that Starlight could exploit to make her escape, and this made sense to me - Twilight is such a next-level nerd that she feels irrationally compelled to complete the puzzle, thus giving Starlight and Autumn their chance to get the heck out of there. The unspoken joke, of course, is that there's only so long that sudoku can keep you entertained.

Starlight and Autumn run for the castle exit, but Twilight reappears, having solved the puzzle in record time. Now quite peeved, she cuts them off with a forcefield to prevent any further escape. Autumn Blaze channels her rage to become nirik, figuring that she can't be put in a book if she's on fire. Unfortunately for her, Twilight's magic can compensate for that, and her nirik-ness doesn't prevent her from getting shlorped inside a book - she just ends up as an illustrated nirik.

With nowhere left to run and no spells that are effective against Twilight, Starlight gives up and Twilight sucks her into a book too.

I felt the scenes of Autumn and Starlight being absorbed into the books are maybe a bit more disturbing than they should have been for this comedic mystery thriller, but I wanted that level of detail to describe the effect of this Haycart-like spell. And the chapter ends there because it's totally a cliffhanger.

Chapter 2 begins with Twilight teleporting back to her aforementioned library with her newly-captured prizes. The story explains that the library is in a pocket dimension, which is part of the justification as to why Starlight embarked upon this plan at all: the fact is, Starlight simply couldn't find or reach the library by herself. She figured out that it had to be inside a pocket dimension, but only Twilight would know how to find or access it. That's why Starlight had to let herself be captured - it was the only way to get herself here.

Twilight talks to Starlight in her new book to try to settle her in, because - as mentioned - Nightmare Sparkle isn't actually evil and she does care about Starlight a lot.

Writing the Haycart's Method effect was quite fun. In "Amending Fences", where we first see the spell used, Twilight claims that books are somehow more readable or comprehensible when you're physically present within their pages. I find that to be a patently absurd notion, but I ran with that anyway and gave Starlight a strange freedom of motion inside her book that I hope makes sense. She can move through pages as a sort of cartoon figure, and sort of "see" things on pages next to her, and also see the reader too.

Starlight tests a few spells to make sure she still has her magic - which she does, but as Twilight explains to her, her magic is now just as bookified as she is, and thus has no effect outside of her pages.

Or so she thinks.

Now comes the twist that the whole fic was building up to from the beginning. See, the entire thing about Starlight Repeatedly Teleports Into Custard is that custard is something beyond Starlight's understanding or control. She can teleport, sure, but she cannot prevent herself from landing in custard when she does. Fate conspires to ensure that this remains so.

In a strange way then, Starlight actually does have control. She cannot stop herself landing in custard, but on the flipside, she can guarantee that she will. It is the one constant in her life. And here, at the end of the world, she finds custard to be her final ally - the last custard in existence is the one place where she knows she must arrive after a teleport. And this gives her what she needs to end this catastrophe and save everyone - the ability to form a link between the Map and Twilight's pocket dimension.

Starlight teleports out of the book, and sure enough, she arrives back in the Map Room, tearing a neat hole in space as she does. She then instructs the spirit of Harmony or treehouse or whatever it is now to fire a big harmony beam into the pocket dimension, which blasts the Nightmare out of Twilight and saves everyone. Also she gets the custard bowl stuck on her head and doesn't bother to take it off because I really liked the visual it created.

The final scene takes place in the hospital, where a weakened Twilight is recovering after being battered by the raw power of Harmony. This ending actually wasn't something I planned for - I was originally going to just end the story after Twilight got blasted. But, I realized that actually, this would be a nice way to end the fic. I've always had kind of a thing for the post-climax recuperation scene.

The scene is mostly just Starlight and Twilight talking about feelings, which is therefore extremely uninteresting since there is no custard or laser beams, but I did the best I could with it. A little more of my nightmare headcanon is discussed here, as Twilight mentions that they'll likely have to go through something like this again for Cadance and Flurry - thereby solidifying the notion that every alicorn will have at least one nightmare incident in their life.

Finally, it ends with Twilight discovering a book about custard, because Custardverse stories always end on a non-sequitur. And that's it!

After it was posted, I came back to my Twitter next day to find that my local brony group had already found the story and were celebrating it, which was a nice surprise since I didn't tell anyone about it and I didn't know any of them kept track of my stories. :)

Trivia

* The cover is a screencap of the Castle of Friendship, with some image manipulation to add a woodcut-style effect, a custard tint, and also a black border so that it pops off the page. The blandness is somewhat intentional as I didn't want to give away any surprises.
* Autumn Blaze is deliberately not tagged on the story, to maintain the surprise.
* The first chapter is titled "Quis Custardiet Ipsos Custardes?", a pun on the Latin phrase "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?" ("Who will guard the guards themselves?")
* Starlight says "I wrote the book on destroying Equestria out of spite -" - you probably won't catch on the first reading that she stops talking because she was suddenly reminded of the thing she's afraid of, namely Twilight and her insane library. Then again, what are you doing reading this a second time?
* Nightmare Sparkle's magic is green because I was sticking with the Midnight Sparkle color scheme.
* The Changelings are kept in the Mirage Wing - Mirage being a legendary changeling as we learned in "A Matter of Principals".
* Twilight mentions ponies hiding out in "the badlands". I don't know if the badlands were ever mentioned in show, but they're an important location in Scootertrix the Abridged.
* If you're paying attention, Starlight mentions in quick succession that the custard was (a) cooked with nirik fire, and (b) still warm - a clue that there is a kirin nearby.
* "Marecenaean" is a pun on Mycenaean, referring to the ancient Greek culture. When I had Twilight pick out a book for Starlight, I figured she'd choose a super old spellbook, since Starlight seems to like messing with spells.
* The fic mentions Twilight experiencing a painful memory as Autumn threatens to burn her books - a reference, of course, to the loss of the Golden Oak Library.
* Starlight hits Twilight with "a wide-angle beam powerful enough to atomize a building". We've previously seen it used to vaporize a draconequus:

* The second chapter is called "A Library Out Of Time". This is a reference to the title of the sci-fi novel A World Out Of Time by Larry Niven. Here, it has a double meaning: Twilight's library is in a pocket dimension which is separate from the rest of the universe, so it is "out of (the normal flow of) time" - but also, Starlight's plan ultimately destroys the library, so it is "out of time" in the sense that it doesn't have much time left.
* I misspelled "staccato" as "stattaco", because I'm an idiot.
* Starlight has a moment of confusion when Twilight mentions "having to go through [a Nightmare situation] at least two more times" - that's because she miscounted the number of living alicorns and forgot Flurry Heart.

Comments

[Ghost Mike]

I still don't really "get" the Custardverse beyond it being a really, really dumb joke taken to its logical conclusion, but both times I read this one, it's hard to not admire the levels of nods, callbacks, allusions and layers of depth in plot and character to what's going on. This truly is a normal, sincere, well-written fic – just one that happens to involve the "Starlight always lands in custard when she teleports" gimmicks. Enough so that I feel kind of guilty about having this in my "Crackfic/Random/Can't Grade" folder (for the record, it would probably be a Good).

And it's just so dense! At least the first chapter, when you consider how much happens. Look at how much you had to recount! Not Chapter 2 as much, given the tension of the action and time clock from last time is largely absent and we get some paragraphs of a character simply reflecting on things. But that works as a release after the buildup and peeling away the mystery last time.

Clearly, this fic could have only been written by someone who's read and absorbed a decent bit about fiction writing over the years. More than a decent bit, really. That, combined with the passion and enthusiasm for mixing a serious premise with a dumb gimmick playd straight, really elevates this one. Fair play, Hawthorn. Fair play.

And hey! You've finally returned to this look-back series. Just one story left now, and it's one you only published five weeks ago, so hopefully it should be an easier recap then this.