“If the youth are not initiated into the tribe, they will burn down the village, just to feel its warmth.” — African proverb
Sixteen years ago, Princess Cadance was forced to adopt a changeling grub as her daughter and Flurry Heart's younger sister. Her name is Cheval, and she was always intended to be a living weapon to be used against Cadance and her family.
In one story, that's exactly what she became, despite all her efforts to be otherwise.
This one is a different take.
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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.
Haven't read the story yet: I think a lot of readers let their love of Light Step/Double Time blind them to the overarching setting. Way back in The Third Wheel, there were always hints of things "being not right" but people shrugged off because it fit the narrative of 'Light Step, rebel without a cause'. Courtesans simply confirmed (and then tripled down) on that fact.
Huh... this is unexpected, and having never read anything by the original author your riffing on I'm not even sure what to think of this either. It's clear enough that you have strong feelings on the matter though, and I can't really blame you for that... I've been there before myself with a few different stories. So if this is what you think you need to do to cleanse your pallet, well then, good luck.
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.
I don't think this is an eloquent temper tantrum, I think this is a pathetic one.
If you don't like a fic, this is where it ends, with you writing an essay condemning it and pointing out why. Writing your own fix with the same characters and situation but going "Ah, but I will fix what went wrong and show him how it was done!" is some weak shit.
Look, I even disagreed with him over the nature vs. nurture aspects of this. There are things I would criticize about it, and in the end I didn't particularly like it, but man, this is just sad.
Also, uhm:
[censored here, not in the original]
Are you black? Because even if this is a direct quote, and you give no indication that it is, that's not a word you just casually drop, let alone a phrase that's incredibly stereotyping.
I suggest avoiding The Last of the Mohicans, too. It's a mess of noble savage/white Indian tropes and uncomfortable to watch.
From Dusk Till Dawn was not a good movie. Yes, it comes as a surprise. It derails their lives a bit like you might expect from an unexpected encounter with the supernatural to be, but it spends forever being one movie and then changes into another, and the investment from one never really pays off. You could try to pass that off as cinema vérité if you thought you were being cute, but everything about it is so gratuitous and pointless that you really can't. If that's your idea of a "good" tonal shift then I shudder to imagine what your opinion of this story indicates.
I'm sure as heck not following you any longer.
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.
Whatever else, I don’t think it’d be controversial of me to say that Shining Armor was underused in A Foreign Education. As both Cheval’s biological dad and the father who raised her, you’d think he’d at least have had one single line of dialogue.
Also apparently even in the throes of a haze-filled rage writing spree I am still incapable of writing a story without dropping a Babylon 5 reference. Might be an amusing game to see if you can spot it. I didn’t even realize I’d put it in until just now.
9577129
You always did overuse Babylon 5, man.
9577394
It’s a good show. I regret nothing. At least this time it was just a line, though, not an entire scene. Heck, the context around the line is even completely changed, from hopelessly despondent mourning for past glories in the original B5 to a badly needed attempt at humor here.
I wish I’d been in a better mood when reading A Foreign Education, I noticed Amaryllis’ riffing of Ra’s al-Ghul from Batman Begins immediately and would have loved to have called it out in a “hey I got that reference!” moment. I don’t recall anyone else getting it.
We are born in the bed our parents make, not the ones we make.
Cheval, you have no idea.
In all seriousness, though, Shining and Cadance's respective arguments as to why Cheval should keep on living were extremely well-executed. And the following heart-to-heart with Flurry, where she admits her own insecurities, sharply highlights the fact that everybody has their own issues to work through as a part of living.
Ain't nothing left for Amaryllis to kill, because you just assassinated Cadence's character right there.
9579769
In the sense of the Starchild theory of the Imperium of Man from Warhammer 40K that posits that the Emperor's propped-up desiccated barely alive body should be unplugged from the Golden Throne because if allowed to die he will be reincarnated and at the least restored to his former power before Horus did his thing.
Yes, I did. Gleefully, and with malice aforethought. You'd turned her into a bad character from how she had been presented in Courtesans.
Gapjaxie and double rainboom , I understand Alt time lines and such, but I find it hard to believe that Shining Armour, The Sisters and Twilight where this complaint to allow a Hostile Changeling hive to be come this much of threat to Equestria . You both wrote well and I like rainbooms ending better because I'm a sucker for happy endings .
9580187
I would personally call my take more "hopeful" than "happy". Cheval's lost just about everything she could, the Crystal Empire has for practical purposes ceased to exist, Flurry Heart has no confidence in the ability of the crystal ponies to ever realize the power trap they've caught themselves in, Cadance has been forced to disown and banish her daughter as the only viable punishment for what Cheval did, and Equestria continues to be distracted by other events. There's not much to be happy about.
But there is stuff to be hopeful about. Cheval is going some place to try and fix herself and make up for what she's done, the crystal ponies are starting to see through Amaryllis' façade (and her whimsy of acting kind is cracking), Cadance at least escaped with her family, and Equestria posses the Crystal Heart. A way forward can actually be seen.
9580318
There mostly likely in nothing left of the hive or the crystal empire with the heart gone the crystal empire will die off and so will the massive hive that is trapped with it.
9580456
Given that the original author didn’t even broach this idea in either Courtesans (where Amaryllis taking it was presented as a reasonable war demand for a successful war, even if it didn’t come to pass) or A Foreign Education (where Cheval was going to do it as she left the Empire with Flurry in charge), it’s safe to assume that the Crystal Heart doesn’t work the same way in Jaxie’s universe as it does in canon.
... What am i reading?
9581430
...I have an entire forward, dude, come on.
Short version, a fix-fic.
9581492
Oh, I read that. :) I still didn't get it.
9581791
Okay, long story short, a fic series that I was really enjoying took a turn for the worst in every possible way - not merely narratively, ‘cause, shucks, sometimes bad things happen to people who don’t deserve it - but actually at a meta level. The author made a series of blunders in world building and characterization...and ignored every attempt - not just by me, but at least a half-dozen others - to point them out.
And...I just couldn’t stand it, not after how much I had enjoyed the first two stories in the series, particularly the second, especially once those meta-blunders started to have effects on the characters and plot of the story. So I wrote this to get my frustrations out of my system. I almost certainly shouldn’t have, but I do feel better for having done so.
But, whatever. I’m done now. I wrote this, unfollowed the author, and I’m done.
9581819
Fair enough. Thank you for the explanation. I hope it helped you.
9581843
I honestly just want to move on at this point. For a Few Bits More updated; I want to focus on that for a bit. Then maybe finally get around to writing the next chapter of ”Daleks Have No Concept Of Friendship!”
I feel like this felt like a bit of a cop out with how the start is written. All this buildup in the fic. The first section of them leaving and some other pony being appointed felt very strange to me and it felt almost awkward to read.
Okay, so, first of all, this is certainly a thought-provoking response to the original fic. And
-- alone is justifying my reading. That's certainly something I wish the original had given a nod to.
But -- and, yeah, there's a big but.
I am getting the oddest feeling reading this, because in a weird way it feels like you're making the original fic's point for it. The author's note was pretty explicit that you felt Jaxie was arguing against forgiveness -- but I feel like you go at least as far as he did. Instead of Cadance forgiving Cheval and Flurry Heart turning her to stone (which, in Equestria, is extremely reversible), you have Flurry Heart forgiving Cheval and Cadance literally disowning her (which doesn't sound reversible to me).
Jaxie showed Cheval's immaturity by having her double down on her mistakes and try to launch a coup to save her family from Amaryllis. You show Cheval's immaturity by having her try to commit suicide to save her family from herself.
I'll spot you that the politics here seem more sensible on the ponies' part. I would certainly prefer rulers (and fiction protagonists) to be more sensible. But I don't necessarily think it's any more realistic. I mean, f*ck, I just have to open a newspaper to see how easy it is for a malevolent incompetent to take over a powerful nation.
None of this is to say that you've written a bad story! I don't think it deserves a downvote. And I'll echo the other commenters in expressing that it's good you were able to exorcise some demons with the story. (It's also good to see the comments be much less of a trash fire than I expected.) It's just ... having read this up to this point, and having explicitly read both the author's note and many of your original comments, I'm struggling to figure out how this fic was the result, or how the person who wrote this fic could have been so upset at the original.
I guess I'd just say: consider interpreting Jaxie's Flurry Heart's "I won't forgive you" the exact same way you're writing Cheval's "Kill me". As something she might have even actually meant, but which was said in the heat of the moment, and which doesn't reflect an actual principle the story is attempting to communicate (any more than this story is arguing for the morality of seppuku).
Honestly, I'm not even sure this comment is useful -- I'll put a similar disclaimer on it that you're putting on your fic as a whole, that being "I'm writing it for me, and I don't expect to change the author's mind, but I had to try to reconcile what I read with what's in my brain". You're probably sick of the whole thing at this point and I don't want to drag you back into it, so don't feel obligated to engage.
At any rate, thanks for channeling your feelings into a thing that got my brain going.
Okay, the final author's note did clarify the way you feel the story had to be changed. *slow nod*
Still, your story tagline -- "How monstrous do you have to be before you can no longer earn forgiveness?" doesn't answer the question any more than Jaxie's does. Cheval still isn't forgiven here. She might be, in the future, but we can't assume that any more than we can assume a future yes or no out of Jaxie's original.
Also, it's 1943 and Adolf Hitler is about to invade your home country after getting a non-aggression pact out of Russia, and your country's rulers are pursuing a policy of appeasement.
That's the sort of situation where it's real easy to decide that your home is f*cked either way, and take it upon yourself to become a monster in order to beat back the bigger threat with their own, demonstrably more effective tactics. It's not failing to realize that she's doing something evil. It's merely textbook radicalization.
At any rate.
I do feel like, if Cheval had said something, this is an entirely plausible look at how it might have gone (except for the fact that you've got a very different take on Cadance than Jaxie does, one which I doubt is compatible with his story universe but I'm sure is compatible with yours). So while I'm not convinced by it as a fixfic, I'll take it as an interesting AU.
Hope you're enjoying getting back to your other writing!
9584930
The very first thing we ever saw Jaxie’s take on Cadance do is emotionally and verbally abuse Light Step in a snap retaliation for Light mouthing off to Shining Armor. She is similarly, but also more deliberately and methodically (in that it’s not a single emotional outburst, but rather a deliberate effort on her part over the course of several days at least) abusive towards Double Time through much of Courtesans, and unabashedly hates Amaryllis throughout, to the point of beginning a long-term plan to take down the changeling queen from an angle she believes Amaryllis isn’t ready to defend against.
She has her reasons for all of this that make sense within the context of both stories, but basically I am just dying to know how this squares with the idea that alicorns can’t really change and Cadance can’t help but love people due to being mentally and emotionally stuck at one moment in time. Because I’m getting the sense that GaPJaxie came up with both ideas, or rather only started trying to actually implement those ideas and think through what they actually meant, only after Courtesans finished. It is a clumsy retcon, which would be bad enough in and of itself, but it’s also a clumsy retcon around which Cheval and Flurry make major decisions.
I wasn’t kidding when I said the original story was plagued by fractal wrongness, that it runs into problems both as a whole, and when you zoom in to look at individual points.
As for the point of Cheval’s forgiveness: the question is asked, but the fact that it’s left unanswered is deliberate; there’s nothing wrong with unanswered questions in and of themselves. That being said, it should be noted that Cadance’s disowning of Cheval is specifically noted as an official rite of discommendation - she’s saying the words but does not necessarily mean any of them, particularly the last bit about dying naked and alone (clearly it is emotionally damaging to her to even say them, given she needs to physically lean on Shining for support). But Cheval did screw up and she should be punished, and she screwed up ROYALLY so that punishment should be severe. It also plays a bit into what I saw of Cadance’s character and it’s arc. Her being a bad princess has, in a very personal way now, started to affect her ability to be a good mother (something she cares much more about) with what Cheval did and the reasons behind it (namely, an unchecked Amaryllis ruining everything she casts a shadow over). Thus we get a very deliberate and obviously painful attempt to be a good princess and a good mother at once, even though it probably comes as too little, too late (if Cadance actually was trying to bring herself to hate Cheval, she would have just put her in a dungeon somewhere, not sent her to the Badlands, the best possible place for her).
That all being said, a final note on forgiveness - there’s a reason why Chrysalis (note the lack of a “queen” title in the story) is in this chapter and alluded to in the penultimate one with the mention of three royal changelings in the Badlands (“Royal” here in the biological sense). Anything Amaryllis has done, Chrysalis has probably done similar in her time, and Cheval was turning into Amaryllis. Chrysalis was included both because I take it as a given that the show will have her redeemed (it’s that kind of show, and they’re deliberately making her sympathetic and pathetic with how lonely she is), and because she’s an obvious sign that Cheval can earn forgiveness. Eventually.
I’m not unreasonable, and I know that after two stories where our main characters find forgiveness the natural next choice is to write one where the new main character doesn’t. It follows pretty logically and would have been good. But the reasons for that stumble when they run into the world building, and also depend on major, unexplained, and frankly nonsensical changes to an existing character (Cadance suddenly becoming especially naive and useless and a doormat, particularly when Courtesans ended with her starting to engineer a plan to overthrow Amaryllis), and a nonsensical choice (Cheval listening to Amaryllis) from our main character, and an unintelligent choice (Flurry going along with the coup) from a character we’re repeatedly told and are supposed to believe is intelligent.
Had I been re-writing this story from the beginning I might have tried to engineer it into basically the same as the canon ending but with a more logical progression of events. Hell, if I was going for a minimalist change all that might need to change is keeping Flurry’s rant about the impossibility of the situation to Cheval, Cheval then by herself deciding (stupidly) that Flurry’s wrong and would still be better, performing the coup, then Flurry retaliating against Cheval in a moment of emotional outrage and petrified her for what she did to Cadance. But how long Cadance is going to be asleep is left ambiguous, so Flurry is de facto Crystal Princess now and is in a “do or die” situation.
We’re left believing that Flurry is intelligent (since she could directly identify the problems facing her potential rule), Cheval still is stoned, etc. I didn’t do this because it didn’t fix three problems, though, namely it straining credulity at best that Cheval would ever listen to Amaryllis, Cadance suddenly becoming a doormat, and the fact that Jesus Christ how could Shining Armor not have a single line of dialogue?!
Seriously with how little he’s mentioned in the original fic I’m left with the impression that he was an absentee dad most of the time given how little Cheval seems to ever think of him.
But since I chose to start instead at the moment I feel the fic jumped the tracks and fell apart completely, it instead ended this way.
But, that’s that, and I’m done. In all seriousness, thanks for giving it a chance. Now go read something I’ve written that wasn’t written while I was possessed by Pazuzu. “Daleks Have No Concept of Friendship!” Is fun and lighthearted, try that.