Starlight had prevented the rainboom once again. To make matters worse, she also followed through on her threat to destroy the time travel spell. Now with no way to reset things back to the way they were, Twilight and Spike will have to seek out each of their friends in order to help them earn their cutie marks. However, manually putting history back on track is a lot messier than it first seems.
Edited by: Nebbie
Additional Editing/Proofreading by:
-Knight of the Raven and Berry Delight (Chapters 1-3)
-IAmADeliciousPotato (Chapter 7)
Cover Art by: Me (and Frown Factory for the Spike vector)
Chapters (8)
Congrats! You get a like.
You have my attention.
Cool story
Interesting!
I like this premise. I've not seen this particular take on Starlight's time rampage yet and it's nice to see Twilight and Spike on their own once in a while.
I found the beginning to have issues but it gets better once Starlight destroys the time scroll for good.
More specifically, while I was able to get a good feeling of what Starlight was doing and what was going through her mind thanks to the description ("through her tears," "as the crack in her armor of anger began to seal back up" and "Starlight's face had grown tense once again") and her dialogue (italics, exclamation points, the content of her lines itself), I didn't have anything about Twilight other than she was "standing a few feet in front of Starlight, Spike sitting tightly on her back."
As I said, it gets better. Starlight traps her in the past, Twilight finally reacts, and Spike even joins the story properly.
I liked that Twilight channeled her magic into ultrasonic vibrations to free filly Rainbow Dash rather than into a canceling spell or a more generic destructive spell. It shows that she's versed in science in addition to magic.
Incidentally, I find myself wondering if Rainbow will go and track Twilight down later on in. She did never get to thank her for saving her life, after all. It might make for an interesting surprise down the line, especially if this story keeps restricting itself to Twilight and Spike's points of view.
I suggest actually writing down the numerals, since finding a sudden "14" or "12" in narration can feel jarring. The word 'unicorn' gets capitalized at random as well, and I suspect it has something to do with your spellchecker.
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Ooh! A detailed comment with a bit of constructive criticism; I've been waiting for one of these! So thank you, I like hearing about readers' thoughts and analysis of story elements.
The beginning. Yeah, looking back in comparison to the rest of the story, I did kind of sideline Twilight and Spike too much. I think this ended up happening because I was trying to give enough focus on Starlight's motivations to ultimately destroy the spell for real; to make the split from the original episode plausible. I think I worried about Starlight so much I ended up making Twilight and Spike not quite as relevant as they should've been.
The bit about RD possibly tracking down Twilight is interesting, because (Spoilers!) that's my plan, but I wasn't intending it as a surprise, though the idea sounds tempting. Gonna talk to my editor and maybe a couple friends for input on which way to write that, because now I'm torn.
I also changed the numbers that were less than twenty to actual words (save for "10-Bit", since that's the actual coin title), along with having changed all mention of races to lowercase. The thing with the races might have been related to spell-check (I forget now though), but I think I was going back and forth on whether I wanted the races in lowercase or uppercase, but ultimately decided that it wouldn't be uppercase in actual Ponish unless it were referring to a nationality or language of sorts (since we don't capitalize "human" or anything in our own language).
But again, thank you very much for the input, it thrills me to see detailed comments!
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I found Starlight's dialogue enough on its own to convey her absolute, dephtless contempt towards Twilight, because it felt credible. When Starlight looks at Twilight, she sees someone whose only definitive loss was a library—a rent-free gift from on high—and she had six friends to help her pick up the pieces anyway. Starlight had to make do with one, and he's the reason she had to pick up her own pieces in the first place.
Twilight should consider herself lucky Starlight settled for preventing the Sonic Rainboom. I'm sure she'd be much delighted with the wreck little Twi would have been if her Big Brother Best Friend Forever had vanished from her life, never to return, without the best foalsitter in the history of foalsitting around to help her through the pain.
The description around the dialogue is external enough to work as Twilight and Spike's point of view, outside of "as the crack in her armor of anger began to seal back up." I feel this sounds more lyrical than what Twilight would actually think, and although Spike might use it due to his love of bombastic comic books, I think he'd do so in a later retelling (probably acting out the scene, too) as opposed to what his actual thoughts would look like as the two of them are dealing with the cornered, unhinged sociopath right now.
I believe this is only necessary if you're gunning for an intimate point of view instead of a more detached one, however. In the latter case, though, the line feels quite lonely as the only metaphor of the entire chapter, especially when it happens as soon as the second paragraph and then there's no similar style in the narration afterward.
Going back to the dialogue, I'd say Starlight's lines are good enough to work entirely on their own in a (possibly entirely italicized) flashback. Not here since there's no pause between her last words and Twilight springing into action, but still an interesting thought if the story had been written differently (starting around the time she pounced on the pegasus she mistook for Starlight, perhaps?).
Then again, Starlight's hateful barbs at Twilight do make a most delightful introduction to this story. And the so, so simple "No." was already a damn good start.
This would remain a surprise if (as mentioned) the narration continues to be solely from Twilight and Spike's points of view, which was what I expected after reading two chapters of exactly that. If it shifts to Rainbow's, of course, then the surprise will be lost—at least if the shift occurs before she finds Twilight again.
It may be worth it to weigh up the pros and cons of the pov-shift's timing if this is what you had in store. It might also be worth it to weigh the pros and cons of including her point of view in the story to begin with, but that might lead to some unpleasant scorching and burning of completed work with no way to make sure it was the right decision.
You're welcome.
I was surprised that Twilight and Spike didn't stumble upon Bright Mac and Pear Butter at Sweet Apple Acres, but then again they might have distracted from the story's premise, possibly even stolen the show.
Them being alive would also have robbed the story of the similarities between Little Mac (and Applejack later on, I assume) and a younger Starlight. Not that I expect Twilight to notice them before a long time.
Speaking of noticing... in the previous chapter, Twilight being an alicorn makes filly Rainbow ecstatic and causes several pegasi to close in on her with questions about this very subject; soon into this chapter, she worries that her status as "an unknown alicorn walking around" will land her in Canterlot's dungeons if she as much as gets close to the city.
All of this disappears after they decide to go to Ponyville.
Yes, Granny Smith gets suspicious when a complete stranger shows up to Sweet Apple Acres, asking to stay over and mentioning a relative she doesn't remember to even exist. But it's never because Twilight is an alicorn.
Samewise, Little Mac isn't surprised at all to see his grandmother talking to an alicorn of all things when he walks in.
Granny Smith not batting an eyelid can be chalked up to having seen it all in her younger days, being thoroughly blasé at anything and everything the universe can throw at her or just plain grief over the death of her son and his wife. The last one could also explain why Little Mac doesn't care, but it's still odd to see something that seemed so important earlier in the story swept under the carpet.
True, I can't recall a time in the show itself where someone who never saw Twilight before commented on her being an alicorn—at least without "that means you're a princess" being the really important part—but as I just mentioned, it's not depicted as a meaningless detail here.
Letting it fade from memory could help a surprise or two later in the story, though. Word can travel far in five fours or so, especially when all the witnesses have wings, and Twilight and Spike's journey has just begun.
Twilight starting to think about her cover story only once she's talking to Granny Smith, even though she spent four hours and a half on a train just to get to Ponyville, on the other hand... It's salvageable as well, but you'd need to show why it never came to her mind during that train ride. Because as it is, not mentioning it doesn't come off as 'leaving subtext' but rather as skipping something genuinely necessary.
She certainly has enough things to worry about for it to slip her mind, though I'm not sure it's in-character for her for such distraction to last so long. There was Spike along with her as well, and he could have wondered the same and asked her about it.
Beyond those issues, I found the rest of the characterization faithful. Twilight and Spike are as obliging as I expect them to be, and that includes her little overruling jab when he spoke up about asking for his permission first.
I loved the bit about the slides from two different timelines merging together. Twilight and Spike wondering at first if this was caused by "chemical imbalance" is another nice nod towards her scientific knowledge as well as Spike's. He's lived with her his whole life. Just because he had difficulty with the word 'imperative' doesn't mean he learned nothing from being around her since he was born.
Moving on to another character, I disagree with Twilight's assessment of Celestia's reaction to "some lunatic who claims she’s from the future and is stuck here." Yes, she'll likely be swarmed by the royal guard as soon as one of them sees her. But Princess Twilight looks just a little too much like the culmination of all her plans, starting with Luna's rescue.
She's going to listen, whether she ends up believing Twilight is genuine or if she's false hope made flesh by one of her enemies.
There is one last thing I want to mention. I noticed this issue in the first chapter, but here, I feel that it's grown to an extent that's actually detrimental to the story. Possibly because it was spread across five thousands words rather than only one thousand.
The narration.
Most of the time, it just states what the characters are feeling, usually along with why they're feeling that way. The reasons are generally obvious from the context, making the explanation unnecessary then, and it comes back to the 'stating' matter when the reasoning could use some fleshing out.
For example;
can be shortened to
because the very sentence spoken by Twilight makes "at how cute the foal looked" redundant, and "Twilight said" is unnecessary because of the context, even before merging the two paragraphs together.
Another example;
Everything written after "he said in a depressed tone" is unnecessary, precisely because of this same context. Little Mac himself confided in Spike earlier in the story, and that's just the most recent instance.
The other half of the flaws I see in the narration is, as I mentioned, that the character's feelings and thoughts are just stated.
One example would be;
How does this "inner annoyance" translate into his face? What does this look, well, look like?
This line later in the story is better, for instance;
It's not much, but it's already better.
It could be improved, possibly by describing how jarring it felt to Twilight, busy as she was stuffing her face with Granny Smith's cooking, but this one is more a matter of writing style.
As much as I emphasize showing rather than telling, it's not automatically better. This line is entirely 'telly,' for instance;
and yet, there's nothing wrong with it. It's not redundant, it has nothing unnecessary. It's short and to the point. The simple "decided to comment" implies she took the time to think about doing so or not and the entire sentence works beautifully.
Despite my amount of criticism, I'm looking forward to the rest of this story. I may have my issues with the execution but the content is solid as far as I'm concerned. As I said previously, I like the premise and find the characterization faithful.
Hard part would be cheering up Pinkie Pie and possibly herself, especially when evil Starlight is on the loose. Then again, expecting the mare to ensure her existence lingers a bit or something....Drama... forgot, so basically the crazy mare is going to make Twi's situation worst later on, expecting at her younger years similar to how the dream interpret a foreshadowing.
Sorry for being late. I was never informed of the update.
I remain amused that Twilight still spinned the friendship angle with Applejack, but she is the princess of that, after all. And her nightmare at the beginning of the chapter tells me she's terrified about the whole ordeal deep down, so it makes sense she's taking refuge in what she's experienced with.
Plus, obviously, the greater context of why Starlight trapped her into the past in the first place and the only way out as far as Twilight can tell. She needs to nudge things back into place.
I'm wondering if there's more to this business meeting that went much better than the Oranges expected. I can't shake off the feeling it was because they 'proved' to be important enough to not only know an alicorn, but to have her be a counselor for their niece to boot... and Twilight has been paranoid about being found out from the start of this story.
First, Cloudsdale gets buzzing over a mystery alicorn, then the Oranges are (maybe) going to become the talk of Manehattan because of another one... besides proving it wasn't some kind of one-off mass hallucination, these 'random' sightings may allow someone to track her down. If Celestia is keeping tabs on the future Bearers as some theories subscribe to, Twilight will probably end up meeting her whether she likes it or not.
All this shifted focus would also allow Starlight Glimmer to get past the radar a lot more easily despite battling that same mystery alicorn for all of Cloudsdale to see, but I doubt she intended to be stuck in the past along with Twilight. That's a chilling thought; if Twilight ever gets back to the present, just what will she find? Starlight will have free reign over Equestria, and that's without mentioning all the other threats out there.
I don't have much to say about the Apples (whether in Ponyville or Manehattan) other than I liked them. Especially Honey Belle, whom I feel stole the show a little from little Applejack; but then again I don't care much for Applejack to begin with. Her husband was kind of just there, though.
Twilight and Spike were nice as well. The latter showed his playful side (once more while interacting with a foal, this time Applejack) whereas the former is still somewhat stuck in her 'didn't think this through' panic mode (as shown with forgetting her ID on the receptionist's desk all afternoon among other things) but never stops being her caring, considerate self (as shown with her reluctance at the Oranges paying for two dinners, again among other things).
Rereading the chapter a long while after helping with it, I feel it takes a lot of time before getting to the 'good stuff', that is to say when Twilight finally meets the Oranges. That's subjective though.
In short, I enjoyed this update and I'm looking forward to the next ones.
I absolutely loved this. The concept itself is a great 'what if' scenario to begin with and you are managing it admirably. I really enjoyed reading the changes between past and present you came up with and it got me wondering as to what else would be different, but just as interesting is your use of the things we know were there. Like AJ leaving her home or the slides from the presentation, excellent attention to detail there which I really enjoyed. ^^
Some thoughts in random order:
It was great to see Lil Mac while he's still in the early stages of growing into his new role. He'll be big and strong one day from all the work he does, but right now he can barely manage half a days work, and why wouldn't he? He's still a colt that till recently only helped his parents who presumably did most of the heavy lifting that he's now having to do. The family connection with him taking care of AB and being protective of her vs Spike was great too, even if it made him nearly chase off a potential friend his age, he managed to reel that back.
Meanwhile AJ has some very real pressures weighing on her and it is clear she didn't open up to anyone about any of her concerns, not about her parents, not about her food, or anything else. It's a good thing Twilight knows how to talk to her and puts all that princess of friendship time to good use. Spike and AJ are hitting it off really well, a little too well. Is Tiny AJ crushing on Spike? Is that why she's teasing him with the grease dare? That's so precious. XD
It's curious that Twilight seems concerned about her status as an Alicorn and her identity, yet she does not think to wear a cloak like Trixie's or a frock like Maud's to cover her wings up. It seemed wierd at first, but then as the story went on it becomes clear that it's not an oversight, Twilight really is very bad at subterfuge. Her cover stories for Granny Smith and meeting the the Oranges were weak, and she had nothing planned for being asked about her ID. This makes sense, Twilight isn't versed in deception, it's not what she's about, heck one of the elements is Honesty. There's also the fact that Twilight and Spike just got hit hard, like, really hard. Basically everyone they know and love is gone and those relationships at present do not seem like they are ever going to come back the same, worse still, in 15 years they will both cease to exists. With everything going on, it's not a wonder Twilight is not entirely on the ball. Rather than get stuck in analysis paralysis, she picked a path and went with it. In this case, getting a base of operations at the farm and retrieving AJ. She'll figure it out from there.
Speaking of things Twilight may figure out... Starlight destroyed the time travel scroll, but it's only the 'future' one. Twilight knows where the 'past' scroll is located: still in the forbidden section of Celestia's library. Granted, without the map it can't be used the way Starlight did, but going back a week in time would still work for the purpose of stopping Starlight from messing up the Rainboom and destroying the empowered scroll. The thing is... Starlight knows that too, and it may well be her first stop after she gave Twilight and Spike the slip. It's the only thing she knows of that could foil her plan at this point and she stole it once before, already. Or maybe I'm entirely off base. Who even knows with Time Travel? xD
Lets talk about Starlight. It isn't clear what happened to her, but there are only two options. Either she went back to the future and is out of the story, or she didn't and she's roaming around somewhere. My first guess would be she's after the scroll again, but if not, what would Starlight do now that she's gotten stuck in the past? From her perspective, it might not be a bad thing. She didn't really leave anything behind, she'd already lost her equalist village and ponies in the future are wise to her ways. Maybe she'll try again. Or, maybe she'll go and stop the stack of books from falling on her and prevent the event that caused Starlight and Sunburst to split up. There are a lot of things she might be up to.
All in all, keep up the good work!
I look forward to seeing what happens.
This was great. I'm adding it to my favorites.
Why isn't Starlight helping them?
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i.imgur.com/pnzJTq3.gif
GREAT SCOTT!
Twilight needs to learn that not everything is gonna turn out like it did in the original timeline. Having a different cutie mark isn’t likely to affect anything major, especially if Rarity explores a different branch of sewing
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Uhh, mate. If you have just come back to this after a while waiting for an update.
Quote from the Stories description.
I really look forward to continuing.
I hope the school for the unicorns with the unrealistic expectations can get sued
Next chapter! Please!
Well I hope this someday continues.
... Wow... That went from zero to a hundred real quick.
Hoo wee! That was intense. Poor Rarity
Hope this gets updated one day
With any luck, Spike would've successfully done damage control with Rarity and helped her regain her cutie mark.
At least pinkie managed to gain hers so she can spread happiness around. Usual old Pinkie.
Hopefully Twilight can go with a plan again. This one it required a bit of luck though with that funny accident.
will we see glimmer again?
oh dear
Huh???
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Or they could obviously be DEAD
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For the sake of the Story? - Probably!
For my own delight and opinion? - Hopefully never again!
And the (something) show must've ended.
MOM!!!!!?
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excuse you?
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https://youtube.com/clip/UgkxrvnKtCLCopwofwoc9_Bua8VowvkGwZDh
Party twi is mildly scary
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yeah, I hope she is on the same twilight journey that took her to see all the worlds she screwed over also lil twilight need to hatch that egg for baby brother!
Well I'm glad this isn't dead. nice new chapter.
Just found this story. Interesting. Added to my read list.
Good thing is burning that old sweater, if she says it's a disaster to fashion then it must be so!
I had confidence that Spike would succeed, and it's a good thing he did because now only three are left. Quite frankly, the hardest one would be young Twilight, since future Twilight would need to run the risk in interacting with her past self.
I really wonder where this love triangle will go. It's quite obvious that AJ is quite smitten by Spike.
I love where it's headed, but there's some romance here, so I hope Applejack wins. To be honest, I'm tired of Sparity. Good luck
Wait so he's not worried? She's been gone all night and he is fine with it?
uuhhhhh.....I see we have a problem between the fashionista and a farmer. How did these 2 become friends later?
!!!!!!!!!!!!!
what!? Do you hate her!?
But what about the Cakes and Cheese Sandwich?
burn????
more???
Nice chapter and good job whittling it down to 3.
So... what's going to happen if/when this timelines Twilight meets up with Applejack and Rarity later? Won't they remember the older Twilight and see that one as an imposter?
Also, while Starlight Glimmer destroyed her version of Starswirl's timespell, shouldn't the original (unmodified) version still exist in this timeline?
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All good questions that will be answered in time.
On the note of the original time spell though, Twilight can't use it any way you slice the situation. First, she wouldn't be able to use it due to having already used it once; she'll either be unable to cast it right then and there, or her "future" self in Season 2 will be unable to cast it, leading to even more future events being disrupted. Furthermore, assuming she could cast it with no consequence, that version of the spell creates stable loops, meaning Twi wouldn't actually be able to change anything in the relative past when using it.
Oh, I hope we get more of this one soon, it's a great story!
Guess Rainbow must've been curious about Twilight Sparkle. This is indeed a problem.
Spike shot for a target on a mile distance, and ended up missing. Thankfully the problem got solved before it got worse. And AJ is such a good sport and got over her jealousy at the end.
This is truly unfortunate for Twilight to be forced into Canterlot without a plan, and good on Spike from keeping Twilight from rushing in.