"A spell that makes destiny less demanding on the caster, and makes your own choices become more prominent." It sounded perfect. Just what Princess Twilight Sparkle needed.
Ponyville didn’t need her, not really. She just needed a respite, however small. If she had to use magic, then so be it.
She took a deep breath and let her magic focus. She lifted her head, closed her eyes, and pushed more magic into the spell. It felt like teleporting.
No Sad or Tragedy tag, but may contain Existentialism.
Thanks to Yami Vizzini, RK Striker JK 5, Unknownlight and Connelly for prereading. A big thanks to Nonagon for editing and plot/pacing assistance.
Chapters (3)
Hmmm... I'm interested to see where this is going, I wonder if we'll have a predicament like in-
*Complete*
Oh, uh... Okay then.
Favoriting for the moment because I know how awesome this is. I'll read and drop something actually meaningful ASAP.
Oooooh existentialism. Took a course in that last summer.
I think, therefore I am, or something like that?
4950175 Yes, that's why EqD rejected it.
4950349 That's the gist of it, sure
Interesting. I quite enjoyed it.
wow.
Interesting. So her experience as a princess traumatized her so much that even when she retconned history she retained a fear of public speaking and impressing others. It's probably for the best, but unfortunately her "vacation" can't last nearly as long as she might like. Because Vinyl Scratch is going to be Princess Vinyl Scratch for about ten minutes before she goes completely bonkers from boredom and stress, and hunts down that spell herself.
Perhaps the timeline won't spontaneously abort itself the third time around, once, I dunno, a certain... outgoing, mature, even-minded unicorn who also happens to be a talented seamstress ends up becoming princess.
Glad to se it here at last. Didn't remember that part of Dash going all "eureka!", and it was a nice addition.
Twilight, Twilight, Twilight. You're so smart... and at times like this, you can be a raging dumbass. You haven't learned any lesson at all, have you. Then again since in the show you never learned any lesson about your gross negligence with your magic... legit kudos for keeping her in-character.
Okay, finished. Great story here, like it was before. ;) But yeah, interesting on choices and fate.
4982122 Ha, not biased are you?
One of the trickiest parts of this story was making Twilight's behavior at the beginning seem somewhat believable. "Twilight has a magic barf" or something is such a cliche that I really wanted to make it obvious that it was her own choice and her own fault that caused it. That's fine for show!Twilight, but the future!Twilight shown here may strain that believability.
This was very good and is a great and interesting premise, and I love the little flashes of doubt creeping up on twilight.... but it in many ways feels like an appetizer instead of a full story... it gives an amazing build up to a situation, and leaves everything unresolved... I find myself hoping the complete tag is just there until you are ready to continue, since it seems sad to just leave it like this to me.
This story holds itself well enough until the abrupt ending, as the other viewers have pointed out. Twilight's attempt to reject her own destiny appears to be successful, although I could see that there were points when fate attempts to reassert its position in her life. That being said, I have to wonder if Princess Celestia knows about what Twilight's going through. Since the Princess's attempt to have Twilight 'make some friends' has essentially failed, it's odd that she would simply allow her student to wallow in her dissatisfaction in Ponyville. Anyways, I'd like to think that Twilight's life can be turned around if she chooses to act in a more decisive manner, but given the fact that this story is completed, we're probably never going to see this happen.
4997499 4998072 Eh, it's not out of the question. I had "Princest is Wincest," It Said as complete and still updated it 6 months later. Still working on balancing interpretability and vagueness--a lot of my complete stories field similar complaints.
4998072
Since Twilight's cutie mark has changed in this history (to a simple book), it's possible that she might retroactively never have been the Princess' student...
I literally did a double take when I saw this.
Wow, that was... really good.
That was a fantastic story. I've seen other "What would happen if Twilight wasn't the Element of Harmony/student of Celestia" fics, they usually make her some archivist in the Canterlot library, and they don't really delve into her personality. This one does go into detail about how Twilight feels, her situation and also her attitude, but showing it more than telling it. Great examination of Twilight's character.
This feels very much like how Twilight would end up if she had never been chosen for anything. (Presumably she saw a "Librarian Wanted" ad in Canterlot and took this position to be head librarian somewhere). It reminds me a lot of a classic Star Trek TNG episode, Tapestry, where Picard starts off the episode wishing he hadn't been such a hellion in his youth, and thanks to Q sees that if he hadn't been pushed into making some bad decisions, Picard would have ended up a mid-level bureaucrat. A similar concept is here, but Twilight doesn't really understand what she's given up. I doubt you will continue this story, but if you do, since it was Q who helped Picard fix things, you could use his FiM expy (Discord) to do so in this story.
5085086 Yeah, I wanted it to be more exploratory (though that is ultimately why EqD ended up rejecting it), because there's too many stories that easily reverse changes in order to deliver a moral. Glad it worked
One of my prereaders actually mentioned that episode (is there any plot Star Trek hasn't done?
). Ultimately, I can see the similarities, but that episode uses the classic trope where everything returns to normal at the end (justifiably, I suppose, since the same thing also created those changes), and I really wanted to avoid that.
5086386 I'm glad you don't change things back, I think it makes the story stronger.
This story is definitely something else... I wonder why EqD rejected it...
Freedom includes the freedom to choose mediocrity.
4950768
Yeah, this story is interesting, but it doesn't really have an arc. It's kind of just "Existentialism- the fic". Can we maybe get another chapter or two to flesh out a proper third act?
AS always Twilight is a real master of thinking things through.
7477318
To be fair, she seems dead tired.