Politically Incorrect

by Door Belle

Bloopers

"Aw, feathers. Don't tell me you're one of those animal cruelty people."

Starlight shook a hot tear off her face. No. No more. She turned to the butcher, who was lecturing about something as he carved into the dead filly's side, and shouted. More tears replaced the first, burning her muzzle; no matter.

"Stop! Stop this madness!"

The crowd fell silent. Then, one by one, every single head turned towards her.

She traded stares with a few of the gryphons for almost a minute. Just as she realized her gryphon glamour had mysteriously dissipated, one voice in the crowd spoke up.

"Mine."

---

---

"Stop! Stop this madness!" Murmurs rippled through the crowd; heads turned towards her. "Just—Just stop!"

"Well, then." The butcher turned away from the corpse on the stage and advanced to the edge of his platform, towering over the crowd. An empty circle formed around Starlight Glimmer as the crowd distanced itself from her, and she swallowed a knot. The too-familiar feeling of abandonment gnawed at her as she forced herself to meet the gryphon's gaze.

After a moment, the butcher laughed.

"An Owl dares speak so to a fine, upstanding son of the Eagle bloodline? That is, dare I say, a hoot!"

Comments

[Gale Maze]

Someone post that picture of Ron Paul waving his hands while it says "IT'S HAPPENING."

[Penalt]

Oh glob, you saved that conversation did you? Well done.

[Diamond Sparkle]

I for one am enjoying this story.

[Door Belle]

7845100

Fair enough. Sometimes you just Don't Like Thing.

7845743

Yo, if you want to see M-rated fetishistic gore, I can show you M-rated fetishistic gore.
Also, I don't have auto-approval. Your problem is with the story approvers and moderators.
Report the story and move on.

[Penalt]

7845743 Yo, dumbass. Ya, I'm talking to you fellow reader. What the hell do you think Gore and Dark tags are for? Maybe you don't have a clue, seeing you haven't actually written any stories for the site on your account. Perhaps if you did actually write something, or even read such elementary things like FAQ's, you would be aware of the basics of such things as Tags and know that when an author tags their story for certain elements one should expect those elements to be in the story.

Might I suggest that if gore shocks you, then you should stay away from stories with that tag?

[Door Belle]

7846049

That's about the size of it.

[HiddenMaster]

7845743 That's awfully damn insulting for what may very well have been a simple mistake or wasn't caught by moderators. So, kindly get off yourself. Yes, this is dark, but there is nothing wrong with that, and moreover there's no reason to be rude about it. Your entire message could have just been condensed down to "This should be mature and I would not have read this if it had been properly labeled" or something like that. No reason to get insulting against someone who meant you no harm and, on top of that, you chose to read this.

[BlabideeblahMLP]

7846064 While I agree that this guy was an asshole, I also feel he's right. The "Gore" and "Dark" tags really aren't enough to warn of just what this story holds, and while changing the rating to "M" may not be within your best interests or even really matter, personally, I still believe it would make sense to do it. You and others probably feel differently, but these are just my two cents.

As for the story itself, I rather enjoyed it for what it is. It reminded me very much of the third chapter of 1984, albeit much more gruesome.

[Meeester]

A single, small paragraph with some blood loss out of the entire story is fine as teen in this case.

[Waterpear]

You should have titled this something else, in my opinion. From the title, I was expecting some witless political allegory; what I got instead was a decent AU fic.

Now, the first scene I don't like. It consists mostly of bland exposition. But after that, the story hits its stride, and I really don't think it deserves a rating as bad as it's gotten.

[Door Belle]

7846399

This level of feedback is awesome. You're awesome.

[Knackerman]

7847757 The story description makes it sound like this occurs before Twilight's offer of redemption in the season 5 finale. Her spell messed up and stranded her in another timeline before she was convinced that friendship with other ponies (with cutie marks) was a possibility.
So it wasn't really a choice on her part, unless I'm misinterpreting the set up.

[Door Belle]

7847780

This is a correct interpretation.

[TerraZeal]

I'd love to see more. I love almost any story that takes place within the Nightmare Moon universe. I much prefer Luna as a ruler than Celestia. Even non-Nightmare Luna would be far more effective. Luna would never have let Sombra come close to waking up...Chrysalis would never have fooled Luna...Luna would have just stone Discord (I love him, but I can't see Luna trying to reform him)...Starlight would have gotten the dungeon treatment with Luna rather than ALSO being reformed. Tia is too...nice. Which is why I make her evil in any story I write that places emphasis on her.

[shimonsays]

Loved your story, don't worry about those who are complaining about the dark themes, why the hell are such pansies even reading a story tagged as dark?

The first blooper was great btw, keep it up!

[Door Belle]

7878108

This is also awesome.

Am I correct in understanding that some of your suggestions boil down to "this story is told from too narrow a POV"? Because some of them don't seem to entirely fit in a story with only limited omniscience where the perspective is tied so closely to one character.

7878121

I don't necessarily agree with everything they said, but I feel encouraging most criticism is good (and I really don't have enough in-depth comments on any of my stories) and arguing with critics is, at best, unhelpful.

[fanreader999999]

Dictatorships are fun when you're god.

[Knackerman]

11376331

Isn't that the point of the story?

Possibly, but if that is the case then the author isn’t being as clever as they seem to think they are being. Instead of a better villainous ruler pointing out the flaws of a lesser one and delivering something approaching just desserts, it’s just a self identified villain getting stomped by another self identified villain. The point is that it only works if Starlight buys what she is selling, but admiring her methods are hypocritical just underlines it’s a scam that she’s all too aware of - it robs the premise of much needed drama.

Of course that’s just my opinion. Some people like stories where characters are stupid, and know it, and still get punished for it. But to me it feels like picking on the slow kid at recess.

Starlight was never ideological for the sake of being ideolgical. What she wanted is power, to rule over a population.

That’s one interpretation of Starlight’s character and it does seem to be the one that this story goes with, but it’s not the only interpretation of her character nor is it the one that I think would best serve this stories premise.

Starlight in the show didn’t want to ‘’rule over a population’, what she wanted was control. That may not sound too different to you, however what Starlight wanted to control was not just other ponies but also more intangible things like how and why we make friends, who was and was not allowed to excel in life, and most importantly when and how people came into and left her life. She felt like she had control over none of these things because of the existence of cutie marks and the special talents they conveyed. She didn’t just remove ponies cutie marks to control them, she saw them as a genuine threat to her having control over not just ponies but control of anything at all that mattered. She didn’t ‘choose’ an ideology at random just so she could have power, but her ideology that removing cutie marks for ponies own good to give them more control over their lives in turn gave her both power and control.

If you don’t see how that works, that’s fine I guess, but saying it was not explained why she chose her anti-cutie mark ideology and that it makes sense for her to admit she was a hypocrite is nonsensical. Either the ideology was a scam and she never believed in it or she believed in it and she would never call herself a hypocrite.