Equality

The mane 6 follow a map to a weird town in Equestria, where everypony is equal in every way. Through adventure and friendship, will Equestria be saved from the evil unicorn behind this? Luckily Princess Cadence might have a way to fix everything, and save a whole town from eternal caos.

Written right after first season five trailer came out.

Chapters (1)

Comments ( 13 )

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Gold Ink

Gold Ink #1 · Feb 20th, 2015 · · ·

This is season 5 premier!

Apatheia

Apatheia #2 · Feb 20th, 2015 · 1 · ·

There's a lot to say about this. First, I won't be able to capture all of it. Second, I won't be able to talk about it in a way that is clear and understandable. We will have to make do. The discussion will be in no particular order.

This is the best fic I've read today.

Now, it's clear to me that a lot of people did not and will not give you the benefit of the doubt. This is unfortunate. All young authors who do make a sincere attempt to write something that is neither their self-insert OC nor some forsaken crossover should be received in a constructive way. Not ignored. This assumes that you are actually fourteen years old. I cannot decide between that and the belief that you are a fellow college student playing a structured and buried joke. The fact that I believe you are a college student, if you are not, should be taken as high compliment.

Let us say that this is, maybe without your intention, the most complex fic I've encountered all day.

Dissonance. First, the face value. Second, the hidden 'spirit' of what you've written.

Face value. It's an endearingly-written oneshot about the Main Six. There's an adventure, a villain, a conflict, and Cadance gets a part too. There's a twist. The villain gets redeemed, they live happily ever after. I'm glossing over it here because I'm impatient. Know that the happy parts were done well.

The spirit. This is what I want to get at. Now, I don't expect you to make any sense of it. Just trying to put the words into shape to talk about it is maximizing the stress. We'll use the description as a model.

"The mane 6 follow a map to a town in Equestria where everypony is equal in every way."
"Will Equestria be saved from the evil unicorn behind this?"

Let's put it like this. The fic is this beautiful, idyllic, simple, happy narrative, but there is this seething, sinister ghost haunting it - a ghost that has absolutely no evidence in the text, yet I could not escape the suspicion that it was there. Writers who know what this effect feels like to experience would pay quite a lot to be able to capture it.

1. A majority of people believe that a society in which everyone is equal in every way would be a happy utopia.
2. People also associate Equestria-per-the-show as a happy utopia.
3. Put Utopia 1 inside Utopia 2 but there's an evil unicorn running it.

First of all, you're right to say that a society of full equality would be evil. That is a complex thought and most of why I think you might be much older than you say.

Look. There is a sinister feeling when the happy utopia has an evil ruler. The two don't match. If it's really a happy utopia, is the ruler evil? If it's really an evil ruler, can it possibly be a happy utopia? Here, though, the two things do impossibly exist at the same time.

The sinister feeling is that I absolutely could not be sure what happens next. You present this contradiction of tone right off the bat with the description. This dissonance sits through the whole fic. The question extends to: can I trust what you're writing? Everything is presented so happily, can I trust that? In the next paragraph, will the Main Six suddenly fall into a horrible, unspeakable fate by this cryptic evil unicorn? Which side is the evil side, really? Is the fic hiding a deeper meaning? Is there some secret meaning crawling up from underneath the text like a Lovecraftian daemon, and if I see it, will it terrify me, will it kill me? Fear fear fear.

"The mane 6 follow a map to a town in Equestria where everypony is equal in every way."
Okay. I don't see anything wrong or evil about this.

"Will Equestria be saved from the evil unicorn behind this?"
But it IS evil.

Dissonance dissonance dissonance. When you introduce this evil unicorn, then in the body of the work nothing really seems evil at all - but can the appearances be trusted? And so on and so on.

Well done.

Please don't change any grammar mistakes, don't change anything. They contribute to the innocent atmosphere of the fic, and that should be kept up. The fic has nothing to suggest that it isn't the happy adventure oneshot that it is - but I can't shake the feeling that it might be more than it seems. I can't answer that question, not now, not even if I keep re-reading it - and that's why it's so good.

And when you do manage to get your readers questioning themselves like this, it's best to never tell them the real answer.

Please do continue writing with the mindset that you used for this one. Please don't try to consciously write-in dissonances like this after reading this. They only work when the reader can't be sure if they were done on purpose. If you do achieve some big effect with your next work, I'll let you know.

Do whatever you want to do. I'll at least give the next one a shot.

FelineFluff

FelineFluff #3 · Feb 20th, 2015 · · ·

5648060 Your message was really long, but I read it anyways. I think I understand what your saying... Your vocabulary is much bigger than mine but I think I caught a "good job" in there so lol thanks! The unicorn was evil, because she turned insane, and she made the townsponies insane too. I think that was a question of yours. But thanks for being one of the first readers

FelineFluff

FelineFluff #4 · Feb 20th, 2015 · · ·

5648028 As I said in my authors notes ^^^ I said that I watched the trailers, and when I saw the cutie mark wall, and the evil unicorn in the cave with the equal signs everywhere, I decided to write about it. And the season five premier won't be anything like this, except for those details. Cadence definetly won't save the day and princesses don't even know their moms in the show. Thanks for commenting on my story though