"So to summarize, your Princess Celestia could beat up an invading army all on her own?"
"Well, yeah I suppose..."
"Then what was up with the mind-controlled zombie teenager army?"
"..."
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Draconaes
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I mean. A teenage zombie army would work. They would tirelessly follow orders and beat on Celestia's army without emotion while Sunset could taunt they are innocent hypnotized souls. Which in turn would make Celestia hesitant on defeating them. It's actually a pretty good plan. Especially if some became unicorns through the statue. Sunset could instantly teach them some destructive spells albeit with varying results.
It was a good plan, IF she could also turn ponies into zombies and her demon form could take on Celestia herself.
I actually have a theory about why sunset didn't steal the crown from celestias office. Think about her history. She was celestias student who thought she deserved to be a princess and wanted celestia to make her one. Celestia dismissed her and sunset runs away, later finding out that celestia chose another to replace her and made her a princess. She lost to twilight. But what happens if she wins the fall formal? She beats twilight and Celestia puts the crown (making her a magical princess) on her head. It's what's she always wanted, Celestia makes her a princess over twilight who lost. She subconsciously picked that path and thought of no other way, especially since she thought she was a sure win.
Sorry a out word ramble typed on phones and can't really see to edit it.
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That's an interesting idea, actually. It's not too far removed from her motivation in this story, but I'll admit I wasn't thinking about it in quite those terms. I'm working on a larger story with Sunset Shimmer at the moment. I may have to put more thought into her relationship with Principal Celestia.
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Not too bad an idea, either, though it does make some assumptions about what Sunset could do with her zombies. Would a mind-controlled unicorn be able to cast spells? Would Sunset just be channeling spells through them? I find working out details like that interesting.
The problem with "who would win in a fight" scenarios in MLP is that fighting isn't really the focus, and it's difficult to really nail down relative power levels. I've seen many debates about Celestia in particular, where depending on how one interprets things she's either fairly incompetent in battle, or is nigh unrivaled in power (if she didn't limit herself, at least).
Part of the inspiration for this story was actually several discussions about Sunset's actions in the first movie, and how certain parts didn't make sense or seemed idiotic. I'll admit I was no great fan of the movie until after Rainbow Rocks; After falling in love with Sunset as a character, I could better appreciate the first movie as an origin for her, but this also inspired me to try and make sense of several elements of the story. Properly motivated, I'm someone who is less likely to say "That's impossible" or "That doesn't make sense" than I am to say "What would it take for this to be possible/make sense?".
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True. Sombra’s mind controlled army seemed to be holding on for a good amount of time in that bad future. Given Twilight’s first encounter with Sombra and Sunset both happened in roughly the same year, if the zombies are roughly on par with the ponies fighting in the crystal war timeline, Sunset should have a decent chance of winning if she simply forces the portal to remain open, allowing for infinite reinforcements.
Sounds like a...tale as old as time.
This story is legit. It needs more likes and more views! An excellent piece of EQG writing to fill the gap between movie one and two.
I thought this was going to be a story poking fun at Sunset’s motivations in the first movie, and I was prepared to propose what I believe is the best explanation for her actions.
Turns out you already thought of every single thing I was going to say (and much, much more!). And it’s portrayed with excellent characterization and natural sounding dialogue. A real winner!
This was great! I never gave much thought to what Sunset was expecting in the first movie, this was a great view on it!
~ Mintstar
Is it bad I laughed when Sunset was trying not to cry?
8645130
Not... Really, no.
They WEREN'T actual undead zombies, only zombies in the sense of mind-controlled slaves. So they would NOT be immune to fatigue, thirst or starvation. Sure, with the right sort of control (though we don't know whether that was actually the case or not and how complete Sunset's control was), they'd follow instructions to their own detriment - maybe even with some degree of competance if they could interpret the commands with a basic degree of competance (but then again, if that happens, they can't be entirely under your control because it's allowing some level of independant thought).
(Similarly, there is no indicationt that Sombra's mind-controlled crystal troopers were immune to such. There is a BIG difference between "immune to morale (so won't rout)" and immune to LOGISTICS. (Hell, even a true Undead army is no immune to that, it just removes food/water from the quation.)
Same goes for teaching spells - just because you can order them to "learn this spell" doesn't mean they would (pun unintended) magically be capable of doing so, unless normal unicorns can learn that near-instantly. (Hell, come to that, something I'd not thought of; the pegasus ones would be more-or-less useless, since we KNOW that Twilight had some locamotive trouble in translation - and Sunset wouldn't know how to fly like a pegasus.)
It was, frankly, a pretty daft and poorly thought out plan if "taking over Equestria with a few score teenage zombies" was her real game plan.
(That gets more stupid when you realise that Princess Spike told us Equestria is actually pretty damn huge in terms of population (someone counted - there were 130 gems visible in that statue ("over fifty" indeed Twilight). From there the population size is dependant on what Equestria qualifies as a "city;" but I did some fagpackets calculations at the time, and it could easily have the same sort of population size as the UK up to Germany (for whatever you consider to be the equivilent tech level) and upwards. The idea of take over that is as absurd as the utterly laughable number of Clone Troops in the old EU that someone insisted was right that wouldn't be sufficient to fight a war in Europe, let alone millions of worlds.)
But - that probably wasn't her game plan. Draconaes's idea of using them as meatshield while she dealt with Celestia (in some fashion) is by far the most vaguely credible suggestion I've heard on the subject.
(Also IACTUAL mindless zombies have to be micromanaged to be able to do ANYTHING useful (mindless minions are not actually very useful aside from very basic jobs).)
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Thank you very much!
I'm glad to see the positive response to this story. I'm hoping to explore Sunset's character even further in future stories.
YES!! Finally, someone else who saw the use of the Zombie Students. I always saw them as a meat shield for Sunset, but no one else ever seemed to pick up on that.
I was expecting there to be a funny answer to the zombie thing because for some reason I thought this was a comedy story. Like, she wanted a massive harem or something.
I’ve always disagreed with people who mocked Sunset’s plan in that first film. As I see it, she has these things going for her:
1. Her own versions of Celestia and Luna who will follow her commands and turn into Alicorns on the other side of the portal.
2. Plenty of hostages in the form of student thralls, including...
3. The little sisters of the heroes waiting on the other side of the portal... or at least versions close enough to confuse them.
4. Everyone she needs to conquer waiting in a room right through the portal, not suspecting an attack.
It’s not about fighting a war... it’s about getting Celestia, Luna, Cadance and the Mane 5 to surrender and go to the human world where they’d be powerless. Then she passes off her versions of Celestia and Luna as the real deal, they return to their thrones, name her their heir, step down, and the nation has been conquered without even knowing it.
I attribute it as being one of those spur-of-the-moment situations that Sunset didn't entirely think through when she was coming up with her plan but she was determined to see it through. A shame that we never got to see her plan actually get carried out--time constraints and animating such a sequence were factors--as it would've given her a stronger incentive towards portraying the villain as she was designated to be.
I enjoyed this story as I imagined what Sunset must have felt like being asked so many questions that she was clearly not comfortable with but she knew that she had to answer them otherwise she would've only hated herself for not being honest.
This is a good head canon. It certainly makes Sunset's plan seem more believable, which is saying something as that was, IMO, one of the weakest parts of the movie. Well done!
Thank you for this.
I am so sick of all the stories that act like having an army of literal human shields was somehow poor planing on Sunset's part. Unless one assumes that Celestia would have no qualms with ordering the wholesale slaughter of innocent children (or doing it herself) Sunset's army was untouchable. Sure, they could be carefully contained until the magical control could be broken, or some such, given time, but:
Sunset, Snips, and Snails had all sprouted wings. Not one of them is a Pegasus (or counterpart to one.) Sunset had every reason to believe that she had three artificial Alicorns on her side. (Whether or not it's true is a non issue since we can only judge the plan based on hypotheticals anyway.) Add to that the two actual ones she had in thrall in the form of Celestia and Luna* and we're looking at the most potent magical force Equestria has ever faced off against.
The army of human shields doesn't need to win anything, they just need to keep the regular ponies from interfering while the Alicorns duke it out. Sunset has the numerical advantage. Depending on whether or not Cadance is a combatant, it's either five to three or five to two.
(And it taking place at the Crystal Empire is decidedly bad for Equestria. That drops a powerful magical artifact right into Sunset's hands after she's dealt with the Princesses.)
-
* Sci-Twi's wings not only ruin all the stories that assumed she'd be a regular unicorn, they also demonstrate that if the human's counterpart is an alicorn the human is too.
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Turns out, Sci-Twi is a unicorn when she heads to Equestria.
It was still a massively stupid idea. For one, counting on Celestia to hold back because they are just mind controlled kids requires her to know this is the case, though that they are being messed with would likely be obvious. But no matter what, you are still trying to stage an invasion through a very, very, VERY narrow choke-point, that already has all of the strongest defenders of Equestria sitting right in front of it. Which in turn is sitting on top of the second most powerful weapon they have access to. Just have Shiny throw up a shield around the mirror to keep too many from pouring out, or from scattering once they do while Cadance heads down to activate the Crystal Heart. Mind control purged, evil beings vaporized. Though "They are just ablative armor while I deal with Celestia" is a much better rationalization then any we actually get in the movie.
What annoys me, are the fics the bring up 'why didn't Sunset steal the crown before the contest?' like some flaw in the movie. It has enough massive gaping plot holes as it is, this is not one of them. It's outright said that after Sunset did just that the first time to snag the fake crown to replace it with Twi's, that Tina and Lucy put the crown somewhere else for safe keeping till the Fall Formal. You can't steal something if you don't know where it is.
You can has review!