Cadance, Shining, Flurry, I’m a rapist and a murderer.
The words were there, right on the tip of Cheval’s tongue, and she should have been saying them. They should have been the first words out of her mouth as soon as she arrived home. She shouldn’t have broken down in tears, she shouldn’t have let them take her into the palace and into her bedroom, she shouldn’t have let them get anywhere near her. On the theory that she was still a princess of the Crystal Empire with some level of authority, she should have called for the guards and had herself arrested on the spot.
Or executed.
But she didn’t do any of that, because it wasn’t enough that she was a rapist and a murderer, she was a liar too – lies by omission, outright falsehoods, misdirection, she’d used them all on herself and others. So the changeling that had been forced on the nominal rulers of the Crystal Empire wore Flurry Heart’s form and lay on a bed she didn’t deserve with her pillow in stolen hooves and a stolen face buried in the pillow. The tears were real enough.
She didn’t know how long she spent crying, but the sun was sinking beyond the horizon on her bedroom window by the time she finally lifted her head from the pillow. Flurry was still there. She’d known, of course, since a mixture of worry and anger and love had been pouring off of the alicorn the entire time. Cadance and Shining Armor weren’t there…which was stupid of them, given what she’d looked like when she stepped off the train, what she still was behind the illusion. She shouldn’t have been left alone with anypony.
Flurry had noticed Cheval’s movement, and looked to her. She didn’t smile, and Cheval was glad of that. “You…kinda’ smell,” Flurry said.
Cheval was less glad of that, even though she could sense that the grim attempt at comedy was soaked in worry. She looked away from Flurry and at a crystal wall instead. “You do,” Flurry continued. “I’m not surprised, you never notice how you’re smelling, even when you – ”
“Where’s Mo – where’s Cadance? Shining Armor?” Cheval interrupted. She could feel them, their love for her, somewhere in the palace.
Flurry took several seconds to answer. “Mom and Dad,” she said. That was it. Just who they were to Flurry and who they couldn’t be any longer to Cheval, not where they were.
“Where are they?”
Cheval felt movement on the bed, then hooves on the crystal floor. “Reading Amaryllis’ ultimatum. Talking it over. Figuring it out, deciding what’s best.” Flurry had come up alongside her, knelt down so she was eye level with Cheval. “I can get them.” Cheval looked to Flurry, the sister she had been forced on. A normal pony would have felt the love coming off of her, nevermind a changeling. The undeserved love. Flurry Heart loved her.
She really was the stupid one, wasn’t she?
Cheval sloughed off Flurry’s stolen form, took on her real one, the one with a carapace and holes in her legs and fangs. Her bed creaked a little at the sudden change in mass. Flurry opened her mouth to speak, but Cheval beat her to it, the words pouring out as quickly as they could, before she had any chance to think about stopping herself.
“I’m a rapist and a murderer. I raped a griffon. His name was Gideon. I made his ex-girlfriend watch…her name was Gia, and I’m the one who broke them up. I’m pregnant too. I enthralled griffons I pretended were my friends, I don’t even remember who, to make sure no one interrupted me. Then when Amaryllis came to get me I made them all attack her, but it wasn’t Amaryllis, they just killed a drone she had sent. And then Amaryllis’ other drones and some Revolutionary Guard I think she enthralled but maybe not killed them all. That’s why I stink. I’m covered in blood and cum.”
Flurry froze after the first word, and all the love that Cheval had felt sputtered and faded to nearly nothing. She remained still for a few more seconds as Cheval continued, but eventually stood and turned around, walking away at a deliberate, quick pace. The last words that Cheval said to her were as the youngest alicorn was going out the door.
Cheval was alone. She buried her head in her pillow again, reaching out, feeling, wondering where the unicorn and alicorn she’d been forced on were. Sometimes if she tried hard enough, followed the feeling of love enough, she could pinpoint where it was in the palace…
Half an hour later, by the time Flurry would have made up her mind about what to do with what Cheval had said and then gone to find her parents, she lost the sensation of Shining Armor's love. She sucked in a breath and held it. Moments later – for the first time in her life when both her mother and her were in the Crystal Palace – she felt Cadance’s love fade beyond her ability to feel it.
They’d hate her now. She’d be sent back to Griffinstone on the first train tomorrow, tried for what she’d done, executed. Either that, or they’d decide to turn her over to Amaryllis, give the monster she was back to the monster that had birthed her. Either way, they’d hate her, and she’d stop hurting them by her mere existence, being a weapon that could be used against them simply by being alive.
Cheval breathed out. It was difficult. It came out ragged, hardly getting by the lump in her throat. It felt as hard as breathing was after she molted.
“Good...” she began, but even as she started to say the words, she felt it again, a faint tickle the back of her throat that she reflexively swallowed and recognied the sensation of immediately...love. Love tinged with disgust and fury, but still love, getting closer to her room. First from Shining Armor, then Cadance.
Cheval's eyes were as wide as they could get when she heard the angry hoof-stomps on the floor of father and adopted mother entering the royal apartments and making their way to her room. Feeling...feeling like they did whenever they'd come to scold her after she'd done something wrong. The anger was multiplied a thousand times over, yes, but the love...somehow it was still there. It was all still there, even after what she'd told Flurry...what she'd told them.
They still loved her.
They still loved her.
Cheval screamed a sound no equine creature could reproduce. Her wings buzzed in fury. She put her fangs to use on the pillow underneath her and tore it apart, then tore apart her bed. The pair of Crystal Guard that patrolled the royal apartments rushed to the door, beating Cadance and Shining Armor to her as they sought to protect their sovereigns, but she hissed at them and used telekinesis to shove them away and back outside. That was about when her conscious thoughts ended for a time and there was just a vague sensation of noise and thrashing and destruction.
When she finally came back to herself, she was in her bathroom, clutching a piece of broken crystal-glass and trying as hard as she could to jam it into her throat at the soft gap in her carapace where the neck met the head. But her hoof was seized in a blue effervescence, halting it from doing more than mildly stinging while powerful white forelegs were physically trying to pull her own from her throat. In the shattered mirror, she saw Cadance behind her and Shining almost on top of her, both crying and shouting something, but she didn’t hear them.
“Don’t stop me!” Cheval screamed. Her horn glowed green as she tried to put her newfound magical ability to enthrall others to use. “Don’t stop me! Don’t stop me! DON’T STOP ME!” But it didn’t work. Shining Armor had been enthralled by a changeling queen once, one much older and stronger than Cheval, and it was never going to happen to him again. Her attempt didn’t work any better on Cadance.
Pink hooves joined Shining’s. Flurry Heart was there now, and Cheval wasn’t a match for the three ponies. Flurry grabbed the crystal-glass shard and yanked it from Cheval’s hoof, a slight spray of red blood hitting Cheval’s eyes as Flurry cut herself on it, adding pony blood to the griffin that still stained her. The blue glow of Cadance’s spread across all of Cheval’s body, and was joined immediately by Shining Armor’s and Flurry Heart’s, freezing her in place.
They tried talking to her, but Cheval didn’t listen. She screamed and struggled. She called them every single insult she could, the gist of which was calling Shining a whore and Cadance a moron and Flurry a retard, anything to get them to hate her so she could stop hurting them, but it didn’t work. Tears started falling from her as she shouted. Cheval had been sure she’d cried all the tears she possibly could have had left in her last night, but apparently not.
At some point, the palace physician arrived, and the Crystal Guard, taking over for the unicorn and pair of alicorns in holding her still. There was a needle and one-one millionth the pain that Cheval deserved. Then everything was dark.
I don't know what to say.
First, the characterization is completely off, which kills the actual quality of the work, given that the original was such a strong character piece, and there's more to the story after that. You're not giving GapJaxie the chance to continue his story in the way that's intended, and instead you're writing your own ending and publishing it without giving him credit in the first place. Worse, you write "in one story" as if there it didn't even merit the acknowledgement of being the original work which you're trying to "fix"
I think this in poor taste.
9575664
If the front author's note is any indication, RDD isn't too fond of the taste either, but then medicine isn't supposed to taste good. If it gets them — and possibly others too — to a point where they aren't bothered so much by A Foreign Education anymore, that's worth it.
9575664
So, first, I have an entire essay leading into the actual story that makes it 100% obvious that this is a fix-fic and wherein I make it abundantly clear that I'm launching off of and trying to replace the ending of A Foreign Education. That's not hidden or obscured, it is discussed frankly at length for about 1,400 words (discounting my Last of the Mohicans shilling and my final mood-breaking paragraph), and if people don't feel like reading that essay that's neither my fault nor my problem, it's there in plain English. You want I should have put the essay in the story description instead? Be a bit long, I think.
Second, Cheval's characterization from chapters 1-6, the recurring theme over and over again, is that she is desperate to avoid hurting her family anymore or being a living weapon against them. I feel you're remembering chapters 7-9 too much. Several times in A Foreign Education Cheval makes it abundantly clear that she would rather die than hurt her family, including saying as much to Amaryllis' face twice in one conversation (Amaryllis' pithy comment that "we already established that you're a liar" is hardly objective). At the same time, she's still obviously willing to cause her family some pain if it means that Amaryllis can't use her against them - that was the entire point of her self-imposed exile, after all. Her attempting suicide doesn't feel out of character, and Khaleesi Flurry Heart from Chapters 7-9 is irrelevent since those are the chapters I'm replacing.
But, third, broadly, you're right. This is in poor taste, both in that I don't think anyone who liked the taste of the trainwreck of contrivance that is the original story could like this fic, and in that I really should have just un-favorited the story and left without a word. I said as much in my little essay, that I expected this to pick up far more flak than praise, if it was even noticed at all.
Doesn't matter. Has to be done.
9575721
By a significant margin, this is the darkest thing I've ever written. Like, I had Grogar cast a spell that instantly killed 10,000 sapient beings in The Return of Tambelon, and I think I've gone darker than that.
Let's just say that by the end of the next chapter it's going to be absolutely clear why I don't touch the subject of rape with a 10-foot pole in the Lunaverse and won't even begin to consider bringing it up or allowing it to be brought up in Season 3 with the changelings.
The madlad did it. Welp, when I read that comment on the original story I was curious. So might as well see what your take on it will be.
9575698 Cheval's character is about fighting the duality of the monster and the princess. That she wants for the best, but there's something in her that instinctively makes it very hard to fight back, and as a teenager that had a completely wrong idea of her identity as a changeling, it was unexpected and something she was really not prepared to fight well. Like a teenager, she was emotional and unreliable. Like a teenager, she got ahead of herself. Like a teenager, she wasn't stupid, but she also wasn't prepared to accept her limitations.
That's my problem with your characterization. You removed the elements that make the character who she is, in favor of an over-dramatic, two-dimensional cardboard that focuses only on the characteristics you think she should have had.
That's what's disappointing. Fix-fics will happen, but there's stories that are "fixed" that were so superficial to begin with that it didn't matter... and there's those that have deeper layers that are lost. And that's the tragedy.
9575762
Well, stick around for the next chapter and see if that's still the case. Or don't. Your choice.
The best parallel for the next chapter I can think of...remember the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode where Worf due to an accident was paralyzed from the neck down and wanted to die? That.
9575777
I didn't know you were following me in the first place.
Wow. This is DakariKingMykan levels of spite.
9575806
DakariKingMykan would have been more subtle.
9575816
The words "DakariKingMykan" and "subtle" should not go in any sentence other than "DakariKingMykan is not subtle."
9575831
Unless of course my intent was to suggest that I both agreed that a huge amount of spite went into this, and that I was being as unsubtle as I possibly could be about it. I am worse than DakariKingMykan right now, is the idea. I'm not pretending to hide it.
9575837
My bad. I kinda suck at detecting sarcasm in real life, let alone Internet conversations.
Y so much hate?
While I wasn't especially upset by the original ending, the level of articulation in your arguments got me curious enough to check this out. And honestly? This is pretty good so far. Obviously, your writing style is different from GaPJaxie's, but it's clear, and the emotions are coming through strong. I know I can't speak for him, but I'd be flattered to know that, one way or another, I inspired someone to this degree. (In fact, this already happened.) Don't let the downvotes get to you.
However, I can't help but feel like you overcorrected a bit, if that makes sense. In the original story, Cheval took her experiences in Griffonstone to heart, and allowed them to reshape her into someone more than a little reprehensible. Here, she takes a complete 180, the shock of what she did sinking in and totally reverting her characterization to square one, so much so that she would rather die than live with her mistakes. The ideal conclusion is probably somewhere in between, and involves a lot more of Cheval's internal conflict as the two paths laid out before her threaten to tear her apart from within. Maybe those paths are personified as the voices of Cadance and Amaryllis talking to her like a shoulder angel/devil, and Flurry acts as her support while she figures things out.
Regardless, I'm gonna see where this goes.
9575855
Do you mean the downvotes for this particular story? It's a fix-fic written in rage-induced haze over four days concerning a fic that I think most people would argue didn't need fixing.
Or do you mean my hate for the original fic? Because I wrote an essay...
9575858
Thanks.
9575844
That's fine. And if you want to read this, you can, and if you don't want to read this, you don't have to. The real unsubtle thing to do would be for me to post a link to this in a comment on the original story and GaPJaxie's blog post about it and make sure to link it to each individual user who responded to it. It wouldn't take very long, maybe 5-10 minutes.
But I'm not going to do that, I've harassed GaPJaxie enough and I'm just doing what I said I was going to do: unfollowed him, unfavorited A Foreign Education, wrote this fic, post this fic, and then be done with it. Anyone who finds it, found it, and can do what they want. Anyone who doesn't find it, doesn't find it. Oh well.
Seriously man, you could have just said that you didn't like it and that you wanted to write your own version of the ending.
I'm cool with fanfiction of my fanfiction. There's no need to get so angry.
9575907
I contest that assertion. Vehemently. Though with the caveat that you should understand that I'm angry within the context of this site and the story you wrote. If I, like, met you on the street and knew I was looking at you, I wouldn't deck you or try and trip you or anything. Hell, I'd probably introduce myself and maybe try and find some common ground outside of this site to build something off of.
And for what it's worth I hope you do somehow manage to turn things around with the next stories in your Sparkle series to a point where I can bring myself to read them again...but I can't see how that's possible.
But that being said...I do honestly want to thank you for at least being cool about this when I couldn't be. And like I said, I do still have The Third Wheel and Courtesans in my "favorites" folder for a reason. They're not going anywhere.
Oh god, it's a fix fic.
9576016
The essay's just a condensed version of everything I typed up in the comments section already, and having typed it all up, I didn't feel any better. Having finished this story, I do feel better.
The meat of the story is the next chapter. It's 5,400-ish words long, longer then the other three chapters combined, nearly double the length in fact. If by the end of that you still feel the same...fine. Like I said, I didn't expect praise for this.
On reflection, I've ultimately decided to not give this one a read; I don't feel that I need to. I found the ending to A Foreign Education adequate and "good enough" that I will probably read whatever entry comes next in that anthology, regardless of how I feel about the mess that led up to the ending; I don't really care about that.
However, as much as I feel I don't need to read this one, I am completely convinced from our discussion that you needed to write it and get everything out, and I am glad that you did that and can move on now. That is what I care about.
9576106
Thanks. And do get back to me if the next story in the storyline is something you'd think I like, because I want to believe GaPJaxie can salvage the series from the mess it was left in. I promise that even if it's not, I won't say or do anything negative.
9575934
Tragic overreaction, really.
I'm all for righteous anger, don't get me wrong, but this is petty and silly.
9576342
Then I'm petty and silly.
9576039
Well, I'm glad this is helping you feel better and move on.
... What am i reading?
9581430
...I have an entire forward, dude, come on.
Short version, a fix-fic.
Making no comment whatsoever on the merits of this work, but didn't you say in your post informing GaP that you intended to "fix" his fic, you expressed an intention to change "Cheval" to something else because you had your own naming convention for changelings. What made you decide otherwise?
9712845
Oh, no, that's for when I bring her into the Lunaverse, if I do. Lunaverse changelings are all named after insect body parts or structures or stages or the like. That particular point wasn't an indictment, by the way, that was just to keep things consistent in my own writing universe.
But since this was continuing on from A Foreign Education Cheval's name was kept.
Late to the party, as it were, with the usual crowd of back-patters in attendance.