Twilight faced off against Tirek, but how far was she willing to go?
Perhaps she went just a little too far...
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- Member Since 14th Nov, 2013
- offline last seen April 23rd
jkbrony
I love writing and MLP. So....I think I'm in the right place.
jkbrony
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Non reisco a comprendere il concetto, per favore speighi?
This was so badass. I thought I was reading the script of an episode.
You are wrong, Celestia. Killing is sometimes the only viable option. And it is not always out of malice that death is dealt. Some deal death out of a sense of duty or pragmatism.
4387511 Right on the money. Celestia of all ponies should know that there are those few, horrible times when the ONLY option is to kill.
To deny that is just STUPID.
4387626 I kind of agree as well. You can only put the "pacifist" suit on for so long until you realize that the villains that are not going to get better like the Joker. He's never going to get better and they'll keep pushing you until you finally snap yourself. It's a no win situation.
Testament - Throne Of Thorns
4387626 It's not about what killing does to the killed. It's about what it does to you. Especially if you do it with magic - it is a pure expression of your will. "you are what you cast".
The worst part of this story was its premise. There was also an annoying logic problem and a disturbing implication from a sentence which could have been phrased better. Also, Celestia has enough character in the show now that this is starting to seem OOC, but I can't be sure. Here are some specifics:
Unless too much rage creates a new pony that takes over the old one, there would be no reason to give this speech to Twilight. It would only depress her and make her vulnerable to her to the next villain. This speech could end up killing Twilight.
You can't tap into something that doesn't exist. Celestia would have known Twilight had darkness within her once she was able to use dark magic.
Peace and harmony for a thousand years and then suddenly war when Luna returns is a bit worrying. The way you phrased it made it seem like Luna was the cause of the invasions, while the real cause was more likely the changing owners of the Elements of Harmony, or just a thousand year time limit. Celestia would not use a phrasing that implied her sister was the cause of strife. There's also no cannon to back up your peace for a thousand years idea. For example: there could have been countless things like changeling invasions occurring during that time.
4388062
Said no one in reality.
Killing doesn't do anything to you. Your remorse and guilt are what do things to you. They send you into depression, remove you from your friends, and stop you from performing well at key moments. Celestia only increased the guilt and remorse.
If anything, she should have apologized for putting her student through that, and said that she was glad both Twilight and Tirek made it out of the battle alive. In this story, she's just killing her student.
It was okay. Seems like you fiddled with an idea in your head... and it must've seemed better in your head didn't it? I know that Celestia should understand the situation as the choices were give him the power and let everypony in Equestria die, or kill him and save everypony. She knows Twilight is the Princess of friendship and if she could, she'd try to befriend him before she even thought of killing him.
But I will say that the grammar and spelling was nice and I didn't cringe seeing messed up words or phrases every paragraph. You captured Twilight's reaction pretty good, she's not OOC. And I like how you could fix this with an alternate ending. It could just mean that Twilight's dark magic really is taking over her and this story is only a dark dream that will get worse until she's completely corrupted with dark magic. That would actually be a nice story to make myself actually.
So, you have earned a like sir or madam.
not very believable at all.
4388306
what about Celestia though. I think she was OOC
4388338 I think she is too and I explained why. I had to give him some approval though, I always do!
Too far? She wouldn't have gone far enough if she had torn him limb from limb and then used his skull and horns to make for herself a throne. All the same though, an interesting premise for the start of a good tyrant Sparkle fic. I was expecting her to deal with Celestia at some point in that conversation but I can see you were playing this toward a different end.
Oi. We've got self righteous and deluded Celestia back?
Emotionally tearing Twilight down is probably the stupidest thing she could have done. It'll either leave her paralyzed in future conflicts or easier for her to fall into a downward spiral leading to Nega Twilight.
4388187 Are you implying that a remorseless killer is a more mentally stable person?
4388557
No. At least, I'm not trying to.
As I see it, remorse and guilt are altruistic emotions meant to improve group survival. So it's not a more stable person, but it is a more "still alive" person, since altruistic emotions can lead to self destruction for the greater good in the most extreme case.
4388062 And you missed the point....
4388179
4387626
Seems like I'll need to explain where I was trying to go to this story.
Sometimes the only option is indeed to kill, but this is a world where even the most sinister of villains can be stopped by six magical artifacts, either by wholly subduing them (in the case of Discord) or by causing them to lose their motivation (in the case of Nightmare Moon and Sunset Shimmer). In that sense, there is not as great a need to kill as there would be otherwise.
Celestia recognized that there may have been a need to kill Tirek. The Elements were still inaccessible, and Twilight was the only one who was capable of stopping him. But if that did need to happen, it should have been a painful thing to do, in spite of how much he needed to be stopped. It's not as though Tirek was going around killing ponies. He was simply draining them of their power. He may tried to kill Twilight, but all really wanted was her power. Once she gave it up, he let her go. And in all seriousness, Twilight was just a bit reckless during the battle. She faced him without having a firm grasp on her new power, and she didn't really consider Ponyville being caught in the crossfire, which it most certainly could have been. Celestia was worried that taking Tirek's life would have meant nothing to Twilight, and was thus worried that Twilight was starting down a dark path that Celestia would have ultimately lost her to.
Celestia berated her, but she also noted that she hadn't lost her faith in her. If Twilight had actually killed him, it probably would have ended up affecting her, especially if she had done it out of revenge. I have seen people in real life show remorse and guilt over killing someone who had been threatening them or hurting them. Taking a life is not an easy concept to swallow. At the end, Twilight decided that she was not going to lose faith in herself, just as Celestia was not going to lose faith in her.
Also, I got the "peace and harmony for a thousand years" thing from the first episode where it's stated that harmony was maintained within Equestria for generations following Celestia's banishment of Luna. True enough, it seems that any dangers that Equestria faced before the start of the series happened well in the past, such as Sombra and Discord.
4389759
And I agree with your message. But sometimes the problem isn't the message, but the delivery.
Celestia is being terribly OOC here. Even if the lesson she's trying to teach is a hard one, cornering an emotionally-fraught Twilight and pressing her beyond the point of tears - and then telling her that she might become a monster in the future, and that she wasn't as perfect as she thought - this is just... no. Not Celestia at all. And like others have said, Celestia above all others should know about hard decisions. She's railing on Twilight for something she did in a stressful situation. It wasn't like she was enjoying it - hell, how does Celestia even know that's what Twilight was trying to do? Twilight doesn't even know! All she knows is that this monster was stealing magic from all of Equestria, forced the Princesses to desperate measures, and just blew up her home. What was she supposed to do? She doesn't know any banishment spells! She didn't have time to get control over her magic - she was interrupted when she was trying to practice. And she tried to get away from Tirek, but her magic was still on the fritz. This Celestia is either cruel or an idiot. Perhaps both.
Also, Nightmare Moon isn't a good example. Luna and Celestia are sisters - they'd fought together and supported each other for possibly millennia. That emotional connection (and realization of 'there's a good person in there') really isn't the same for, say, Tirek or Sombra.
Rewatching the scene, it was easy to notice, that Twilight definitely wanted to trample Tirek's corpce into the ground, once she finished. A-and deservedly... a pity that Sombra did not survived.
Everyone's analyzing this from moral and characterization standpoints. No one has noted the technical aspects. Your grammar is amazing. I only managed to notice one mistake:
You're missing a word between "few" and "people", which I assume is supposed to be "few". Also, I don't think they use the word "people" in Equestria. Normally, they say "ponies", but if Celestia isn't talking about ponies exclusively, then perhaps "individuals" would work better.
Well this could lead to some interesting consequences.
Imagine Twilight now second guessing all her decisions in an attempt to stop herself from falling to darkness only to come off as appearing indecisive when a situation calls for quick action, which could lead to problems with her friends.
Now everytime she looks at Celestia she'll see either imagined or real disappointment in the princess's expression/eyes which makes her feel worse and effects her decisions even more.
Then imagine Twilight looking at ways or creating backup plans to banish herself from Equestria in such a way that she won't be able to return to harm her friends and family if she does fall to darkness. Somepony finds one of these plans (and the incomplete checklist
) and confronts Celestia with it only to discover that she never had THAT discussion with Twilight, leading to speculation that either Chrysalis has returned......or Tirek may not have been the only one to escape from Tartarus
Sorry folks, just an odd thought.....
Odd, the only thing that went through my head as I read this was "Celestia's a biiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiitch."
Not a bad read.
Celestia didn't teach Twilight this spell. Twilight copied it based off of her recollection of Celestia's single casting, which speaks volumes about Twilight's ability to learn new spells. Celestia also seems to have only casted the spell in order to be dramatic.
How can Twilight cast a spell that draws from something she doesn't have? Surely it's more likely that someone like Twilight, who has lived much of her life spurning the friendship of others, ignores one of her dear friends because she's annoying, and who pursued Fake!Cadence like an inquisitor, has hated quite a lot of things and finds the emotion to be a natural component of her psyche. If this spell is fueled by hatred, what should disturb Celestia is that Twilight could cast it without any formal training, based upon a single demonstration outside of the proper learning context, with only a bit of difficulty. Twilight's a friggin' dark magic prodigy just waiting to get her hands on the necronomicon.
edit: Expanding on this post, I think a big part of the problem with your story is you attempt to portray Twilight's attempt to kill Tirek as a start of darkness, while simultaneously portraying Twilight as being completely unwilling to defend this attempt. Twilight is instead in denial. This makes Celestia look unnecessarily cruel and harsh, as Twilight makes no attempt to defend a position such as "some ponies need to be killed," or "it is my right to kill the enemies of my people." Instead we have Celestia berating Twilight when a gentler, more motherly Celestia could have made the same point, just as effectively, without leaving her faithful student in tears, alone. If you want Celestia's approach to be seen as "in the right" you need to portray Twilight's attempt to kill Tirek as a reification of darkness or a relapse into darkness. I'd suggest portraying Twilight as someone who has been far closer to going down a dark path than she'd ever like to admit, starting with her rejection of friendship in the earlier years of her life. Portray her as someone who has too much power to be reckless or careless. We know from lesson Zero that even relatively simple spells in her repertoire could allow her to destroy all semblance of order in a town. We know from the season 3 opener that Twilight can learn dark magic just by seeing another pony cast it once, and that she has the raw power to casually teleport herself, and lift an Ursa minor (Which we can only assume has been boosted tremendously by her ascension). Twilight is a certifiably dangerous pony, one who must take great care and responsibility in the usage of her powers lest she bring destruction and chaos to multitudes. As such, having her defend casual usage of her powers, her attempt to kill Tirek, or anything like that would make Celestia's conduct in this fic seem much more reasonable.
Aside from the awe of the fight being a piece right out of Dragon Ball Z or a epic comic book fight, I was thinking the whole time Holy Crap Twilight a little bit much. I'd think that she was trying to knock him out, or at least stun him, I mean he had Earth pony toughness, Pegasus agility, and magic from chaos itself (stronger than 2 Alicorns) and Unicorns. The odds of killing him were nil, but I get the point of this. I doubt that Celestia would try to make her apprentice-now-peer cry, she is usually calm even in dire times.
I've seen some valid criticisms in the comments, but this story was really well put together, the characters came off natural(to me), and everything just sort of flowed. I give it a solid
out of 5
4387286 Pony che è tutto
It takes a really great show to provoke thoughtful fics like this one (though I personally think Ward was a little rough on the Beaver in this one, ifuknowwatimean).
hi hi
People are saying that Celestia is out of character, but isn't that kind of the point?
- Celestia
She's basically admitting that she's emotionally compromised because of how close she is to Twilight, and that she is having trouble controlling her anger.
4392750
I disagree with your expansion on the topic. Twilight's actions are not the heart of the issue, but rather her intentions. She did not intend to kill Tirek, but ended acting towards that end out of anger.
If Twilight had said that, yes, she intended to kill Tirek and had thought through it rationally, having no other option left, then Celestia wouldn't have had any ground to argue on.
You're wrong, Celestia. Killing doesn't always stem from hatred. Most of the time, it's a result of self-defense, duty or necessity even.
And it gets easier. Killing is hard... at first. Then the years pass, the unimaginable becomes everyday, the hideous becomes tedious, the unbearable becomes routine. It's amazing, what one can live with.
For laughs: If "my" Celestia was to stumble upon these two debating, she would stroll up to Celestia, bachand (backhoof?) her across the face, and leave with a cynical chuckle, shaking her head.
On the one hand, I think Celestia was being cruel to Twilight at first. But when she explained it, I understood why. Twilight was clearly acting based on emotion and rage in that fight, and did not take the time to consider the implications of what killing Tirek would do to her as a person, Sombra's magic aside.
Killing is making a very important choice, the choice to end someone else's life. Seeing the flashbacks to how Celestia dealt with the villains in her own time always emphasized she felt she was resorting to dire measures to stop them, and believed she was doing it because she had to. Twilight on the other hand was fueled by rage, and while it could easily be argued she had to kill Tirek since she had no idea about the Rainbow Power, she wasn't trying to kill him because she was doing what had to be done, she was doing it for emotional reasons.
The fic touches on a delicate subject, both in-universe and out, and does it well. Good job.
Wow. Lots of debate here. I'm not getting into that. I mean, this is the world where wars between bitter rivals are fought with pies, after all.
Just wanted to say that I thought this was a pretty cool look at the situation.
very few...and...ponies, not people, PONIES!
Didn't they like, kill Sombra, or something?
4387626 Totally agree on that, I mean, Tirek got his second chance but he screwed it and
Tirek, is one of them
I dunno, it kind of comes as Celestia being the one who's under stress. When people - and ponies - are stressed, they tend to revert to type. So Celestia - as a consequence of botching things and once again almost seeing her kingdom annihilated - is reverting very hard to being a mentor and ruler, instinctively trying to force a lesson and reassert her authority. Doing these sorts of things are what her life is made of and naturally feel right to her. Regardless of whether that's what Twilight needs right now.
I would have destroyed him.
Okay, now I want to give Celestia a hard time. She should have dealt with Tirek not forced Twilight to and then come around to criticise her. Given what she said she has no grounds on which to expect Twilight to anything but go Nightmare on her. She makes Twilight do her work and then gives her a hard time for not being perfect?
4399430
Hmm...
4392750
Interesting, that.
Killing is not something to be taken lightly, but when your citizens are suffering, and your kingdom is on the verge of distruction, as a Princess it is your job to do something about it Celestia! Maybe you should have come up with a better plan to fight Tirek then giving all your magic to Twilight. Your lucky she let you have your magic back in the first place, if I'd been her I just would have kept it along with whatever magic I could pull off Tirek before he was thrown back into Tartarus.
Oh shut up, Celestia, you stupid bitch. The heat of battle is no time for moral quandaries. You go into a fight with a monster, utterly destroying them should be the first and only goal. Futtering about, angsting over whether to pull your punches,will get you KILLED. And wallowing in guilt like some sniveling Jedi wannabee because you were angry when you fought that monster? Load of shit. Killing a monster SHOULD feel good.
Tirek nearly MURDERED your student and fellow princess, as if it were a trivial thing! If he'd died it would have been nothing less than him reaping what he sowed, and punishing your student for doing what you didn't have the INNARDS to do makes you deplorable.
In the moon, not to it
You should rewatch the first episode. Also, why no Twilicorn tag?
4390398
A better question would be, how did Celestia know what happened at all? Last time I checked only Tirek and Twilight witnessed the fight and I doubt either of them would sit down and explain in detail what happened so the entire confrontation between Twilight and Celestia is a non sequitur.
4402766 Honestly, in this situation, where she's condemning Twilight for doing this - Celestia comes off as a coward. Twilight barely has any experience ruling and controlling alicorn magic. She foists all this incredible power on Twilight, says 'good luck, it's all on you now', and then berates her because Twilight doesn't save the world exactly the way she'd have done it. Why didn't Celestia take all the alicorn magic and face down Tirek in all her wisdom and benevolence?
She put her inexperienced protege in an absolutely horrible situation, and instead of having the decency to praise her or apologize, she lays into her for not being good enough.
Honestly, the whole plan of 'take our alicorn magic and go hide' wasn't a good plan to begin with. Even if Tirek never found out about Twilight... Equestria's still a mess, and the ponies are still drained. But I can swallow that better than I can swallow this.
Also, I'd like to note that even we don't know if Twilight was trying to kill Tirek. All we know is that she was furious and firing off crazy blasts of magic that hurt but caused no lasting harm to him, while he did the same. It looked more to me like they were trying to beat each other into submission.
I like this, it's contemplative and could almost, almost fit into the show. That's what fanfics are for!
Also, TwiTwi and Spike hugging is always timeless, always.
Very cool,
I love the emotion this story elicits. The way this ties into the show is great too.
I like how you wrote Celestia, you could feel the difference in her personality. When she was having this talk with Twilight she wasn't simply addressing her as another of her subjects or even as a student, but as another princess. As the saying goes with great power comes great responsibility and Celestia is here to tell Twilight that her job as princess goes far beyond smiling and waving.
Very very cool
This is an excellent story, but it is flawed. I could imagine Twilight willing to kill to stop Tirek and save her friends, and I see nothing wrong with that.
yeah celestia just one thing one tiny thing, fuck you and the horse you rode in on!
I would've had my gun loaded and ready if Celestia came up to me, what a stupid bastard!
4387286 Eeeeehh? Nani?
P.S. Nani : What?