TTwenty Years Later

• MLP: FiM
• Dark
• Mystery
• Sad

Twenty years after the events of the show, Paper Quill joins Spike as one of Twilight's assistants. But why does she keep having these terrible dreams? And why is Twilight so insistent on asking her about them?

• Alt. Universe
• Twilight
• Other

Naitoshadou · 9.1k words · 391 views

Hey gang, today we’re going to be cracking open the story Twenty Years Later by NatioShadou, who used to be a reviewer here though we never interacted. This was a very interesting read that did take awhile to get going, but once it did get going, it really did hit me. Let’s hit it.

Spoiler warning, because I am going to go in depth into the mechanics of this story and the twist itself. I’ll try to spoiler tag everything but I may forget so this is your only warning!

The plotline follows Paper Quill, Twilight’s newest assistant, as she struggles with trauma and nightmares that begin to plague her. Yet when she brings it up with Twilight, Twilight becomes adamant on trying to help, to the point where it’s almost overly hostile.

Before we get into the second half of the plot I need to address a problem I had with the first half. As I got into this, I really didn’t like it, because the beginning to me simply read as another war story in Equestria. Paper Quill felt like an OC, even if OC wasn’t a tagged character, and overall the war felt that it would be a prominent theme in the story, which honestly didn’t hook me that much.

The story establishes this about what happened: Starlight, for reasons unknown, betrayed Equestria and started a war against Celestia and Luna, during which Luna is killed by methods unknown. Not much else is really revealed to the reader, other than Starlight was killed to end the war.

This brings us into the second half of the story. After a nasty argument with Twilight, Paper Quill witnesses Twilight rearranging some books and won’t let Paper see them. Paper sneaks into the library at night to see these books, and that’s where the twist of this story lies: that Paper Quill is actually a memory-wiped Starlight Glimmer.

From here it’s revealed that Twilight and Starlight were lovers, and while Celestia wanted to kill Starlight in revenge for Luna’s death, Twilight stepped in to save her.

Now that we’ve laid out the plotline, let’s unpack. I really, really don’t know if the first half of the story is a good lead up into the second half of the story, and here’s why. I have a hard time sympathizing with Paper because the first half really outlines her to be a horrible pony. And this really affects the emotionality of this story and not in a great way, because I can’t really be sad for this character if the first half convinced me she’s such a horrible pony.

Starlight seems to be the villain, although the author claims that this should be ambiguous. The problem I have with this is that she really does feel like a villain here, and honestly I don’t know if this story truly needs that. I can think of a few alternate scenarios that could still leave the twist as is without delving into the whole war aspect.

I find myself asking what this story gains for having Starlight be the villain, who raged a brutal war in Equestria and has the blood of others on her hooves. Sure, we do get the justification as to why Twilight’s move was necessary, but it makes her almost unlikeable and hard to relate to.

Yes, she is indeed a traitor, but she can be a traitor in other means, besides leading a bloody revolution for some undisclosed purpose. I think this is another aspect that bothered me: we have so little information as to why Starlight started a war that we just can’t sympathize with her.

In conclusion, the first half of this story really did bother me. It didn’t hold my interest and I didn’t like the direction I thought it was going.

But that being said, let’s get into something I really did like: the second half of the story.

The twist that Starlight is actually Paper Quill really gave me whiplash. It came out of left field and I wasn’t expecting it, but looking back the clues were absolutely there: the repetition of Paper being called a ‘traitor,’ Paper’s pessimistic attitude to the Princess Luna statue, Twilight’s concern for her nightmares, and the overall romantic undertones of everything.

I did think that Twilight and Paper were going to hook up at the end, but I wasn’t really expecting that they had already done so.

I am, however, wondering how many ponies know the truth behind what happened: Fluttershy does seem to know a little, but Applejack’s lines make me feel that they’re in the dark. And this raises some questions: how did Twilight justify Paper’s purpose if they didn’t know? And how are they okay with this if they did know?

I suppose it doesn’t bother me that much, but it does raise some concerns, like did Twilight implant Paper with some artificial memories to replace those she took? Paper doesn’t seem to think much about her past or herself, besides being abandoned at the altar which feels like an odd bit. Is the implication here that Twilight abandoned her? If so, for what purpose?

To sum it up, the first half lost me, and if I were a casual reader rather than a reviewer I may not have continued reading, which really sucks because I do like the second half. 

The characters at play here are Starlight, Paper, and Twilight. Overall, each did feel well defined and established, although I had some early concerns in the first half of Twilight’s behavior. She came off as quite aggressive and perhaps invasive, yet this was justified by the second half of the story.

I guess I theoretically could make the claim that Paper didn’t really feel like Starlight, but this could be easily explained by Twilight taking her memories. In the beginning I felt that Paper didn’t have much personality to her, but I think this can again be explained away, mostly because I was operating under the assumption this was an OC character.

So overall I suppose I didn’t have any major problems with the characterization, which is always nice to see. As I said before, the emotional appeals are clearly there for each character, but it takes a bit for them to get going.

So I found it odd that the story was one chapter of straight ten thousand words. I honestly feel that it may be better to give to us chapter by chapter, as I think the divides are there: the splits in between days, for example, can serve as some chapter divides. I guess for me longer oneshots have a higher chance of losing me if they’re really long and not all that interesting whereas they may be more digestible in the form of short chapters. But maybe that’s just me.

I noted a few technical things, and since I don’t have notes I’ll point them out here:

They’re Pinkies pancakes

Missing apostrophe

“Already ate, huh.”

Period should be a comma to connect it to its tag

I’m fine. A bit tired, but I had some coffee earlier that should kick in any time now.”

Missing an opening quotation mark

“No” the quiver had subsided somewhat

Missing a punctuation mark

“Need a hand?”

Should probably be ‘need a hoof’

Goldleaf

I think this should be gold leaf.

“Why?
Why?
Why?
Wh—

I think the repetition here is a bit much and doesn’t add a whole lot.

As a whole, there were some minor technical errors, and I did feel the prose felt a bit too flowery at the beginning, but my doubts about that kind of disappeared by the end. I did note that the errors I found occurred in the second half, but the first half had some denser prose. Not sure why that is.

This was a story that really did take a while to get going, but the twist really did give me whiplash and it’s probably my favorite bit about this story. However, I find myself questioning some of the opening plot choices and some of the other story choices, which affects my reading of the tale.

I guess I’m walking away satisfied, but I can’t shake the feeling that the beginning lost me very quickly. 

If you like a good mystery and a story that delivers a powerful twist, I’d recommend this story. But be warned that the beginning may lose you if you don’t like war stories, but I’d advise you to try and stick through it. 

I think you’ve got some good stuff going. I do feel that the story feels divided beyond what I said, in that the first half seems technically sound but has a bit more flowery prose while the second half has great prose but is technically weaker, I don’t know why that is. But again, this was a pretty good story, but I find myself echoing the concerns brought up by your comments section. 

Plot: 6
Characterization: 6
Prose: 5

Average: 5.67

Thanks for the review! I'll keep what you said in mind for sure. As for why one was more flowery, in the end it comes down to motivation and structure. This story has a basic premise, and I started with the ending in mind. As I continued, writer's block sprung up time and again, and I reworked and reworked certain segments. That's probably what led to the latter half being a bit weaker and less prose-like. As for the war feeling a bit much, it's certainly fair. A commenter made the point that the situation could have been handled without that specific element, which I hadn't considered while writing. Overall, I can certainly agree with you assessment, and might, MIGHT do a rewrite of it in the future to smooth out some of the problem. Thanks so much!

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No problem, glad to have helped!