Part 1: Fallen Heroes

The story starts with the last few minutes of "Mysterious Mare-Do-Well" except with a twist: Dash doesn't catch Mare-Do-Well, instead going home to sulk. Meanwhile Pinkie as MDW goes back to the parade, and hears a bunch of comments along the lines of at least she does't brag like Dash, how much better she is than Dash, etc.

The next few days continue similarly, with MDW saving a bunch of lives and driving Dash into an ever-greater state of despair and bitterness.

Meanwhile, the press catches wind of the whole MDW thing and a swarm of journalists descends on Ponyville. Rarity runs into a journalist who's trying to get in touch with MDW and she says she can get him an interview if he'll give her free advertising for Carousel Boutique.

Rarity does the interview and while she doesn't say anything bad against Dash, the journalist, looking for a sensation, twists her words around to make it seem like she's attacking Dash.

Dash reads the article and, now deep in the throes of CMFIS, pulls a Lesson Zero and decides to make a crisis in order to look like a hero. She winds up luring a hydra to Ponyville where Twilight (as Mare-Do-Well) saves the day. Again.

Rainbow Dash remembers that she can fly much faster than Mare-Do-Well and challenges her to a race, the loser leaving Ponyville for good. In preparation, Twilight gives Fluttershy a potion to increase her speed to give Rainbow a run for her money. This works MUCH better than intended and, coupled with Dash's wing injury from the hydra, results in Fluttershy winning and Dash's exile form Ponyville.

Twilight and the others realize just how deeply they hurt their friend and try to go confess and apologize, but Pinkie dons the MDW costume one last time to go rescue a pony lost in the Everfree, a pony whom Dash had seen on her way out but decided not to help. Dash confronts Pinkie and before she can tell her about the plot, the two come to blows. Fluttershy, who's been looking for Dash, intervenes in the fight, and Dash accidentally breaks her wing, causing Fluttershy to plummet to the ground. Fluttershy is dead.

The pony who Pinkie rescues incorrectly assumes that Dash murdered Fluttershy and tells the rest of the Mane 6 that. The town rapidly turns on her and, in desperation, Dash finds the Alicorn Amulet in a shop...

Sounds....convoluted honestly.

I would read it

dark mi compadre... mucho darko! I would not be a good judge of the validity of this plot. It is outside my realm of knowledge... Not that I would like to read a story like this.

Though if you stopped at pinkie confronts dash then maybe, but that would be a totaly different story!

Alright, all of that sounded awesome to me, and then you got to the fight. I personally can't see them ever coming to blows, but if you work it into the story well enough, go ahead. It's certainly a thrilling idea that I would love to read, and plausible for the most part to boot. I look forward to seeing what you can come up with with this.

[THIS THREAD WILL BE DELETED IN 1 WEEK]

Escalating quickly, to put it mildly. Personally, I thought it would go with Rainbow Dash eventually turning to villainy and confronting MDW in an epic bout.

That's kinda dark, and killing Flutters could get you lynched (although a well-executed "apparently killing" would fit into the soap-opera-like plot twistiness). I think if you can find and maintain the right tone, however, you might be onto something.

Yeah, soap opera style could handle this nicely.

I think it should end when pinkie and dash fight. Doing the whole murderer/alicorn amulet bit is dragging on the story a bit much, and flutters death is so sudden and unexpected that it serves best as the climax of the story, not just a stepping stone on to the next scene.

More often than not, the execution of a story is more crucial than the idea, much like creating your own company. I'll read pretty much anything if it's well written (unless it somehow insults me), and I'd say go for it. You may, however, want to focus one one plot element to drive the story forwards. Having two just makes both anticlimactic, unless you want to split it into two stories.

I'm sorry but this sounds like a mess. In reading this idea, I have no idea what the point of the story is suppose to be about. I do like the idea of exploring a 'what-if' story but is the point? What's the goal you want to achieve with this idea?

I don't think it's in their character to go so far as to banish Rainbow Dash from Ponyville. What the hell?

Also, you'd think after Rainbow bringing a Hydra to Ponyville, they'd figure out that maybe posing as Mare-Do-Well isn't the best way to go about this?

Just seems like a lot of these problems can be solved by common sense.

Whatever. It's the worst episode, anyways. Do what you want.

There is no such thing as a bad idea, only a poorly executed one.

858024 No, she banished herself. Fluttershy honestly didn't think she'd be able to beat Dash, and she didn't tell the rest the terms of the race.

857997 The thing is, it's not supposed to be a soap opera. It's supposed to be a tragedy, along the lines of Shakespeare, Wicked, Luna's turn to Nightmare Moon, the Star Wars prequels, etc.

858195 Fluttershy not telling the rest of the MAne 6 the rather strict terms Dash set would be incredibly daft. Especially if Twilight brews up a potion so Fluttershy can compete.

858195 Hey, you the one writing it, so you can use whatever tone you want.

I generally don't read tragedies (if I want to feel bad, I read the news) but I don't disrespect them as an artform. Most of the tragic stuff I have looked at on this site completely missed the point of a tragedy by simply having the characters fail despite a simple solution, if not an easy one. Tragedy is very hard to do well, and not very fun to read, and the tag is used badly a lot (just because ponies get hurt doesn't make it tragedy, just because ponies fail doesn't make it deep or meaningful, just because I had bad experiences with a style of fanfic doesn't mean you're not a perfectly wonderful author who can tell great stories...)

Sorry didn't mean to rant there. Don't mind me, carry on.

857976 I'm with you on that..

So, what would the Alicorn Amulet do for Dash? Doesn't it only work on unicorns?

Also, it does seem out of character for her friends to not tell her about them being MDW before it comes to that.

Honestly, not my style, but it can work.

858206 Well, she never expected to win, and it's not like this is the first time that Fluttershy's quietness has kept important information from her friends.

858241 That's actually a genre convention: the audience sees the solution but the characters don't, due to their flaws.

858354 In my headcanon, the Alicorn Amulet essentially makes one into an alicorn, hence the name.

And the Mane 5 all have their reasons for wanting to keep up the charade, it's a tragedy on their end as well.

858195

assuming Rainbow Dash openly stated that the loser leaves Ponyville, Twilight just goes "YEAH WELL LETS BEAT HER AND GET HER BANISHED FROM PONYVILLE BEST PLAN EVER."

No.
They. Wouldn't. Do that. They would not even consider beating her in the race because that is just plain cruel.

Rainbow Dash did state the deal, but Twilight and co. took her up on the offer and purposefully got her banished. The fault lies with both sides.

858503 Except since she's the one flying against Rainbow Dash making it Fluttershy's fault, she would speak up. Hinging on Fluttershy's quietness and not telling the rest that the loser is banished would make for a really weak reason. I mean at that point it's almost contractual stupidity on several characters part. I mean waiting for the Mane 5 to get to RD's banishment to realize how much they've hurt their friend is not very believable as the whole point of MDW was to teach her some humility. It shouldn't take a hydra attack to realize that their lesson is getting out of hand.

So if i could make this believable, would any of you read it?

862341
I see what you did there...

I like a good tragedy, hence Macbeth on my favorite novels list, but I'm not particularly certain of the execution here. I still don't think readers would agree with your terms of what the Alicorn Amulet can do since Trixie didn't become one when she wore it, but don't let my hang up stop you.

I would give it a once over, maybe more if you can work around the obvious issues.

857969 I don't know about anypony else, but this sounds really interesting and definitely something I would read! I'm curious to see how you're going to do this, and where it can go.

858035
No, there's some pretty bad ideas.

Not that this is terrible, but...yeah. People have bad ideas.