Light Step did a lot of radio interviews; she was something of a famous pony. Shortly after the war ended, she was asked to give an interview on her latest avante-garde art installation, The Showmare. It was a return to her roots, graffitied onto the side of an abandoned factory in the industrial district. The whole thing was getting rave reviews, and everypony in Canterlot knew it was the new thing they just had to see.
She and the interviewer sat down. The little light went on to say they were live, and the radio pony cleared her throat. “Hello, Light. Thank you for joining us today.”
“Hello, everypony,” she said into her microphone. Then she said, “And if we have any changelings listening, I live in the large white house on the north road leading into Ponyville. I have shelter and affection for any creature in need. I’m the sister of Princess Twilight, and she will protect you from anypony who comes after you. If you can make it to Ponyville, you’ll be safe. Flurry Heart can’t get you here.”
Then she talked about her art or whatever. The Showmare wasn’t great.
When she got back to her house late that evening, she got out the spare blankets and the cot. Double Time told her she should go to sleep, but she decided to stay up instead, and Double stayed with her.
That night, two changelings showed up seeking sanctuary. One got the guest bedroom, and one got the cot. The next day, a third arrived, and they had to use the couch cushions to make another bed.
The day after that, a group of twenty-two arrived together. They were all that was left of an engineering battalion that had been halfway home when the war ended. Some were still in uniform.
By the end of the first month, there were seven thousand changelings camped on Light Step’s lawn.
“Hey, Double,” Light gently nudged open the door to their bedroom. “How you feeling?”
Double Time didn’t respond. That was not so unusual, since the war ended. She lay in bed in her natural form and stared out the window.
“Well, I um… I have something for you. For us, really.” Light pushed the door open the rest of the way. A basket levitated beside her. “Look.”
Inside the basket, wrapped in layers of green cloth, was the little face of a baby earth pony colt. He couldn’t have been more than a few months old, and his face still looked squashed in that way that newborns do. He had a pacifier half in and half out of his mouth, but was more curious about what was going on around him. He reached out to Double Time, with his trembling little forehooves.
“That’s a child,” Double Time said.
“Yeah. A mare left him. She walked up and said, ‘you take creatures that aren’t wanted, right?’ And I thought she meant, you know, bugs. So I said yes. And she gave me him.” Light cleared her throat. “I checked. He’s really a pony.”
“Rarity wanted another child, didn’t she? She could adopt him.”
“Oh, um…” Light nodded. “She could. But I was actually thinking you and I should finally—”
“No,” Double said. Then she got out of bed and walked out.
Four years before Cheval left for the Griffonstone Institute of Science, Light had asked Double a question. Light had been in the form of a stallion named Burner, and Double was in the form of a mare named Smoke. And so, as a proper stallion, Light got down on his knees in front of the mare of his dreams.
“Marry me, you wonderful creature,” he said.
She flew away.
The ponies of Ponyville took them in, of course. They were a kind breed.
There wasn’t even a discussion. Every house in Ponyville threw open its spare room to a changeling that needed shelter. Twilight quartered nearly a hundred drones in her palace, and Filthy Rich another twenty in his mansion. But even with everypony working together, Ponyville simply did not have anywhere near seven-thousand unused beds. It was a small town, after all.
So the construction ponies of Ponyville built new cottages, next to the refugee camp that was forming on Light Step’s lawn. The changelings of the worker caste inspected the new buildings with a wary eye, knocked on them with a hoof, and nibbled on the wood a bit.
“Not bad,” they said. Then they piled rocks around the buildings, covered them in resin and spit, and peed on the whole thing to start the hardening process. The buildings that resulted were so solid a rampaging dragon would bounce off the side, and cottages meant to hold two ponies comfortably fit twenty changelings in their pods.
For the next set of structures, the ponies of Ponyville skipped the cottages and gave the changelings the wood directly. The refugee camp on Light’s lawn disappeared tent by tent, and in its place, a miniature hive rose.
“Double,” Light called, chasing Double Time out into the hall. “Double, come on. Don’t be this way, you…”
Double pushed open a hallway window, turned into a pegasus, and flew out into the open air, quickly gaining enough distance to be out of earshot. Not that that stopped Light from shouting, “Bitch!” at Double’s retreating tail.
Then the baby started to cry. It took her awhile to deal with that.
Some of the changelings in Ponyville were nursery workers. On the day of the final battle, they had fled the burning hive with their children stuffed into backpacks and saddlebags. In total, eighteen grubs and thirty-two nymphs survived the journey.
They asked Twilight to inspect them.
“Um…” Twilight asked. “Inspect them for what? I don’t know anything about children’s health. Um. For changelings or ponies.”
“Overall quality,” one of the changelings explained. A large swarm had gathered outside Twilight’s castle, looking up at her silently. “To determine if they’re good. And correct their parents if their upbringing has been deficient.”
“Oh, I can’t.” Twilight blushed and raised a hoof. “I don’t know anything about raising children. I’m kind of a teenager myself.”
“But you’re the…” The spokeschangeling cleared her throat. “Princess. The leader. Of the town. You must decide if the children are good.”
“I’m sure their parents can decide if their own children are…” Twilight frowned, biting her lip. She looked back at Light and Double for direction. “Are good. Can’t they?”
“Of course not,” Double snapped, “Parents love their children. They can’t be objective about them. That’s why in the hive, Amaryllis inspects all the children once a month. Inspected. She lined the little brats up and walked down the line like it was a military review.”
“Don’t talk about inspection that way,” the changeling from the mob said. “It’s important the nymphs have an authority figure to look up to.”
“Why?” Double asked, buzzing over her way. “Why is that important? What’s going to happen if they don’t have an authority figure in their lives? Mmm? What precisely is going to happen?” She got so close, she and the other changeling were nose to nose. “Do you not understand that it’s over? It’s all over. Your queen is dead. She is gone and the hive is gone and they are never coming back and the sooner you clue into that the better!”
“Double, that’s enough,” Twilight snapped. “You don’t have to—”
Double flew away.
The next morning, all seven-thousand changelings lined up on the outskirts of Ponyville so Twilight could inspect the nymphs. She picked one up, and said that it looked, “Very clever.”
For six months, a thousand changelings worked menial jobs in the greater Ponyville area and pooled all the money to send that nymph to a university in Canterlot. They all knew Twilight was only being polite. But it made them feel better.
There was work to be done. Light couldn’t sit around the house waiting for Double to come back. So she levitated her basket beside her, and marched out into the hive.
It was dark, crowded, confusing, and had a smell that was strongly reminiscent of urine and pollen, but that was apparently how changelings preferred it. Some were in their natural forms and some pretended to be ponies, but all of them politely made way for her. If they treated Twilight like their leader, they treated her like an officer. Some even saluted her as she passed.
She was surprised the little one didn’t cry, but the smell and the buzzing of many insectile wings lulled him right to sleep.
The first order of the day was resolving a dispute between the hive and some ponies from outside of town. The ponies were seasonal laborers, who came to Ponyville every year as hired hooves to help with the harvest. But that year, they arrived to find themselves displaced by changeling refugees, who didn’t rest and worked for hugs. After some haggling, she paid them a fair wage to help teach the new arrivals more advanced farming skills. It smoothed things over.
Next, she had to deal with a group of changelings who were uncomfortable being in their natural forms. They preferred to impersonate ponies, but the ponies of Ponyville had made it clear that nopony’s form was to be mimicked without their consent. And so, Light Step gave her consent, and a dozen copies of her ran out into the world, each wearing a prominent purple pin that said: “Secret Shapeshifter”
Finally, she went into Ponyville to run her errands. She had to meet with her sister, send some letters, get more formula for the baby, get her mane cut, and pick up some things. The last item on her list was heading to Bon Bon’s for some candy—that always made her feel better.
When she arrived in the shop, she found the counter unstaffed. A faint rustling and thumping was coming from the back room. Light assumed Bon Bon was hard at work. “Hello?” she called, pushing open the door. “Is anypony…”
Peering through the doorway, she saw Bon Bon In flagrante with two identical Lyras. All three were frozen in alarm at the sight of the open door. The pose they were all in was quite complicated. Both Lyras had their hooves in interesting places, and they were doing something with their horns that caused a magical glow under Bon Bon’s tail. It looked fun.
Light sighed. “Just to check, are any of you my girlfriend?”
“We’re not in a relationship,” one of the Lyra’s snapped.
“Oh my gosh,” the other Lyra quickly covered her privates. “Shut the door!”
“Aaand, the mood is dead,” Bon Bon said, falling back to the floor. “Thanks, Double. Really.”
“Look,” Light said, without closing the door first, “Will you just come home please?”
“I don’t have a home. You have a home,” Double said, still using Lyra’s voice. “I sleep in other buildings you know.”
“Yes, and you sleep with other ponies. Case in point,” Light gestured.
“Shut the door!” the real Lyra yelled. Both Double and Light ignored her.
“Double,” Light spoke quickly, “I accepted that more than a decade ago. I’m fine with it, and we planted a garden together. There’s a mug in the cabinet with your initials on it. It is your home. It is our home. Please talk to me.”
Double scrambled out the door into the alley behind the shop. Lyra, for her part, remembered she was a unicorn -- and with a blast of telekinesis, slammed the door to the front.
Some of the changelings tried to offer Light Step a replacement girlfriend—one who looked just like Double Time, even in her natural form. At first, Light was furious, but then she noticed all the ponies in the group around her were worker caste.
None of them, she realized, really understood what a special somepony was. And so she stopped yelling and spent an hour explaining the birds and the bees to creatures that were, in some regards, very much like bees.
They didn’t get it.
Ponyville was a good town. Nopony minded if Double Time slept around, but when word got out she and Light were on the rocks, she found her comfort food frequently interrupted by good intentions.
Nothing ruins the mood like being asked, “But have you really tried to work things out with her?” midway through cropping a bound pony’s flanks.
It still took three days for Double to come home. Light didn’t hear her enter. She woke up one morning, and there was Double in her bed. She was still trying to decide what to say, when the baby started crying.
“Don’t you dare vanish before I get back,” she said, stumbling out of bed and off to the next room.
When the little one had been fed, burped, and changed, Light returned. To her surprise, Double really was still there, curled up on top of the blankets and staring out the window. “You can’t just show up with a foal,” Double said. “You can’t walk in on your partner and give them a child like it was a toy.”
“You heard the part where someone abandoned him on my doorstep right?” Light grumbled as she slid back into bed. “I’d give him to the nursery workers, but some of them are still unclear on the fact that ponies can’t eat all their food for the week in one enormous meal.”
“Give him to somepony who can take care of him then.”
“We can take care of him.” Light wrapped her legs around Double, holding her from behind. “Don’t you want to create something together?”
“We do. We create art. You paint and I’m your muse.” Double shifted in bed, like she couldn’t get comfortable. “What do you do is beautiful. Looking at it… it makes me feel better.”
“I’m not going to be remembered as an artist. Decades of art school and painting and gallery shows, and if history remembers me, it’s going to be as the mare who saved seven-thousand changelings.” She kissed the back of Double’s head. “It’s a good legacy.”
“I’m sorry. But you’re wrong.” Double gripped Light’s hoof with her own. “You’re a genius, Light. Ponies will be looking at your art for centuries. Little art students are going to bitch at each other about trying to rip your style, just like we did at that age. But all this?” She gestured out the window at the hive beyond. “In fifty years, this is going to be ruins.”
Double’s wings buzzed, tapping against her shell. It made a sound like falling rain. “Nopony will ever want to live in them, or maintain them. But changeling buildings are… are very strong. They’ll stand for centuries. The ruins will last long than we ever will. Tourists will come to Ponyville and take pictures of these weird, mystic-looking structures full of dust and shed carapaces. And there’s going to be a little plaque with your name on it, saying that you did this during your blue period.”
“I wish I understood the hold Amaryllis has on you.” Light let out a breath, and smiled a sad smile. “I don’t know if it’s biological, or magic, or how you were raised, but no matter how many times ponies forgive you, no matter how many good things you do or build, you always think of yourself as Double Time, Changeling Infiltrator. Like the last twenty years were playing pretend, and she’s the real you. Like any day you’re going to go back to being that creature.”
“It’d be pretty impressive if she had a hold on me at this point, seeing as how she’s dead.”
“I don’t know if it’s impressive. But she does.” Light drew in a breath and squeezed Double again. “You still think she is the hive. That without her it’s all over.”
“My species is going to go extinct. I’m not sure how much more over it can be than that.”
“I…” Light hesitated. “I’m sorry. I don’t… I don’t know what…” She stumbled over her words. “Your legacy isn’t just the creatures that Queen Amaryllis squeezed out of her thighs. That’s how you think of it. You came from her and will one day return to her, and your legacy is the next generation she creates. And that’s crap. Your legacy is the ponies you influence and who care about you and the mark you leave on the world.”
Light sniffled. “And if there are parts of the hive you think are worth preserving, you can… you can teach. You’re a drone, remember? You couldn’t breed children before and you can’t breed them now. But you can still raise them. You can still create something in this world that’s a worthy legacy. And…”
She started to choke up, managing a weak: “And fuck you for thinking that my art matters more than this. How much am I going to have to love you before you stop thinking of yourself as an expendable pawn? They matter and you matter.”
For a long time, there was silence between them.
“I don’t have a…” Double spoke slowly. “Pair bonding instinct. You’re really not my girlfriend, Light. You’re not. I don’t feel that.”
“But you love me,” Light said. “I know you love me.”
“I love other ponies too.”
“Yeah, I know, and I don’t care.” Light squeezed her eyes shut. “I know you’re never going to be my little pony wife. You’re not going to dote on foals and coo over grandkids and carry pictures of them around because they’re just so cute. But you’re the creature I’ve chosen as the love of my life, and I can’t imagine raising a foal with anyone else.”
“Our relationship isn’t fair. It never was. I use you. You love me and only me, and stay up late to see if I’ll come home. I run off on you when the conversation gets boring.”
“Yup. You can be kind of manipulative. And do you think I’m so stupid I haven’t noticed that in the last twenty years?” Light stiffened her tone. “Or do you think I’m still the stupid, emotional filly you met in college who can’t make her own decisions?”
“I think I’m a monster, and you deserve better.”
“Well you’re wrong.” She tightened her grip around Double. “And I’m keeping him. Because I don’t think you will run off. I think you’re better than you believe you are. I think this is when you admit that you…”
She couldn’t finish. Her voice cracked, and she lapsed into silence. In the next room, the baby started to cry again.
“I’ll… I’ll…” Light stumbled out of bed. “I need to go.”
Before she made it to the hallway door, Double asked: “What’s his name?”
“He doesn’t have one yet.” Light rubbed her eyes. “But, it should be something important to both of us. So. I was thinking of naming him after his uncle. Shining Armor.”
“No. It’s a good idea, but Shining hasn’t been dead long enough to reuse his name like that. It would be disrespectful.” Double thought it over for a moment. “Gallant.”
“I like ‘Gallant,’” Light said. The baby’s crying intensified. “I gotta go.”
When she returned, Double was still there.
Gallant. Like all good pony names, it had layers of meaning. It meant one who is brave and heroic, which he certainly was. He got that from Light’s side of the family. But in old Equestrian, it referred to a stallion with many mare friends, and he was certainly that too.
He got it from Double, everypony said. Ponyville loved to tell stories of his adventures. He was Daring Do for a new generation, punching out griffons and escaping with a beautiful mare.
He even saved Equestria, once. There was a communist superweapon in a volcano base and everything. It was a big deal, at the time.
Of course, by the time he turned forty-five, his adventuring days were done. His mane had turned grey, his interests mundane, and he spent a little more time at home. Like most children of the Ponyville Hive, he’d developed a preference for small spaces and confusing architecture.
One day, while sitting in what used to be Light’s study, he flipped open the newspaper. “CHANGELING PRINCESS CHEVAL SIGHTED IN CRYSTAL EMPIRE,” the headline read. There were pictures.
He got up, walked over to the bookshelf, and from it lifted a special wooden box. It was covered in dust. The last time he’d touched it, his mothers had been alive.
Opening it revealed a collection of books, scrolls, and magical items. On top of all of them was a pair of letters, neatly addressed to the last changeling princess.
He booked his tickets to the Crystal Empire that afternoon.
I'm honestly surprised Cheval hasn't tried to commit suicide.
Actually, four posts.
Thank you for not including me in your normal “you fucking called it!!’ responses (or at least you haven’t as of me typing this up). It wouldn’t have been right. I don’t like having called this. I wish I had been wrong.
This is a good chapter for the shit situation that exists in this story. In fact that sort-of describes most of this fic so far. It’s good. It’s well-written. It’s tugging at the heartstrings. I think I might have been able to like it if only it wasn’t part of a larger series. If it didn’t have the context around it that it did, but some different one, if that makes sense. If so many of the problems couldn’t be laid at the hooves of canon characters. If the world wasn’t centered on the debasement of things presented as unambiguously good in the series.
Especially Thorax. This entire series, it turns out, basically centers on ruining everything he tried to do in the show. It was all dust and ash.
When this fic started I pre-typed up three responses to what I saw as this inevitability, based on what I saw as the three most likely scenarios: If the Badlands Hive was wiped out by griffins, if the Badlands Hive turned on Equestria, or if the Badlands Hive entered some form of hibernation/petrifaction waiting for Cheval to escape her own situation. Honestly the last was the worst from a narrative standpoint even if it was obviously the happiest, but all three have the same fundamental problems running through them.
They were unkindly worded. I’m editing the first one, the one that turned out to be correct, now to be...less so. So now I just have two questions that I need answered.
1) What happened to Thorax? I mean, specifically, did he die at the Badlands Hive?
2) Was there a Queen at the Badlands Hive prior to its destruction?
If no answers are forthcoming, I’ll make some assumptions and post it in a little bit.
I want to know what was it that Double couldn't admit. That she couldn't let go? That she wasn't a monster? That she actually loved Light more than the others? Some other thing?
Nice to know Gallant Sparkle carried the family torch, thought. And I also hope he's a well ajusted individual, unlike his changeling mother or alicorn aunt.
And once again Celestia's influence appears. If there's one family member Twilight should've taken north, it's Gallant. Where's her comeuppance? Or the only referral to that shall be Light's mentioned-only screaming?
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She's a teenager with at least three of those she loves still alive. That's bound to count for something.
9629551
He died.
Yes, Thorax. Then he died.
RDD,
I believe that Thorax was referred to in a specific way that Cheval was referred to in the second book, so that might answer your question.
He even saved Equestria, once. There was a communist superweapon in a volcano base and everything. It was a big deal, at the time.
The true reason that communism will never take hold in
AmericaEquestria is because of Captain Flurry Heart and the Equestrian Avengers!9629557
More to the point she wasn’t raised around changelings, so she has a degree of psychological separation from this matter that, say, a Jew coming out of a ten-year coma in 1945 learning about the Holocaust and also his family in specific wouldn’t. That probably helps.
...although that reminds me, what the Hell ever happened to the other changelings in the Crystal Empire? The other ones that Amaryllis left with Cadance back in Courtesans? Cadance was specifically giving them to important families in the Empire. You’d think that these important families would have had the power to stop this or mitigate this. They seem to have been forgotten about. For that matter, so has Cadance’s entire plan that she began in that fic.
By the way, Jaxie, pro tip for your future endeavors: stories that involve the extinction of an entire sapient race that has been shown to be just as capable as good or evil as anyone else cannot be 100% happy. They’d have to struggle beyond all reason to get to even 50%.
So, yeah. Like I said, you weren’t obligated to keep your word. Breaking it isn’t a crime. But having given and then broken it, no one will be in the wrong for calling you out on it.
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So Thorax was a Queen in the biological sense. Well, that helps. A little.
Editing response now...
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So he lie about friendship or this is propaganda?
9629602
Propoganda. We know Thorax! He's the cutest little cinnamon roll and he really was Twilight's friend.
9629602
To be honest, if anything the ponyville chapter shows that the Crystal Empire is, on the subject of changelings, somewhere near Nazi Germany to Jews, so the propaganda is THICK.
I wonder how will Flurry deal with that and her sister. Will she call the one she loved a monster? Will she recognize that she herself is a monster on a nearly identical level as the queen mother? Will she dare attack get nephews and nieces? Because let's be honest, that's something that Twilight would go full elements on, instead of sole alicorn.
And there's been no enemy hit by that that has not been defeated, yet.
9629508
I resemble this remark.
9629604
We know Thorax from show.
Not from "Third wheel" wb.
9629621
Yo way yo...
Yo way yo, home va ray
Yo-ay rah, Jerhum Brunnen-G
Yo way yo, home va ray
Yo-ay rah, Jerhum Brunnen-G
Yo way yo, home va ray
Yo-ay rah, Jerhum Brunnen-G
Yo-ay rah, Jerhum Brunnen-G...
The more I read this story, the more I think that Jaxie fooled us all about it having a happy ending~
9623930
All typos corrected! With my thanks of course.
The castle took a few knocks during the war.
Well, Twilight does like Cheval more than Flurry right now, so she is the favorite niece. But if Twilight were to include nephews, Gallant would probably take it.
Once you realize she doesn't bite, she's really quite nice.
Once she got her cutie mark, she stopped aging.
"If the people won't love me they will learn to fear me instead!"
Flurry has been masterminding the events of this story -- she's the one who decided when Cheval would be unfrozen, and that Cadence would be the first one to see her. But she's been notable in her absence.
"Murder is one thing, but this show is TV-Y!"
Really, from a certain point of view, this is all Flurry's fault.
thought light and double were still alive when they released cheval, guess i misread some things
Light and Double form the backbone of this whole saga, so it's good to see their relationship continue to persist through all the hardships life has thrown at both of them. Not to mention how they continued to work at self improvement and grow into better people until their deaths.
I wish I could like this story a million times!!! So much story building going on. So many Legacies. I absolutely adore it. I also love how you have a chapter from the 'past' and then a chapter from the 'present'. Or is it 'present' and 'future'?
9629604
Propoganda that has clearly served Flurry Heart well, but which stands a good chance of coming back around to bite her in the flank both politically, and personally, since i sincerely doubt Equestria has been going along with shamelessly slandering their fallen friend and ally; doubly so given that when Twilight and Flurry Heart came to blows, she didn't stop at incapacitating her aunt, she went out of her way to extensively further maul Twilight well after even a blind man could see the fight was over.
Necessity in war can make for some strange bedfellows, so Equestria has clearly gone along with all of this, until now. But the war is well and truly over, and i cannot see any reasonable way that Celestia and Luna are going to continue to be okay with Flurry's behaviour. Leaving a violent, genocidal, lying, war monger, in control of a planetary emotional amplifier artifact like the Crystal Heart is an existential threat to the entire world. Sombra must be laughing himself sick in the afterlife (assuming he's dead).
Right. Thoughts on what's actually happened. The Big Thing.
Flurry Heart has been a participant, in fact the principle architect, of the genocide of an entire species. Let’s state that fact right now. We know it, of course, we just read about it plainly, but let's not for a moment forget it.
Sure, Cheval is still around, but Thorax and his entire Hive are dead. The entire Northern Changeling Hive is dead. And their culture, their language, their society, everything that made them more than just animals eating food, is gone, or at most remembered by non-changeling scholars. Genocide is not merely killing a lot of people, it's also wiping out their culture.
But worse…a lot of it can be laid at the feet of Thorax, too, albeit unintentionally. Because if he had never risked his life going to the Crystal Empire, if he’d never shown himself to Spike, if he’d never actively started looking for a way to reform the changelings, if he’d never actually done so, then Amaryllis would not have been able to carry out her wars against the North. The reformation of the changeling people turned out to be a death trap. In his attempts to save his people, Thorax instead handed Amaryllis a weapon that she used to grow the power of her Hive, leading her to loot and rape and pillage across the North, and this path of conquest directly lead to the creation of a far greater monster in Flurry Heart. Whatever else Amaryllis can be accused of, genocide at least isn’t among the list.
Jaxie has taken the actions and the intentions of one of the kindest, noblest, most well-meaning creatures that the show has ever given us, and debased them. Corrupted them. Turned them against him. Made it lead in a very direct, very straightforward way to the permanent extinction of his entire people, the Badlands Hive, and the near-extinction of his species but for a stroke of luck.
How many changelings do you think tried to get to Cheval? Survivors from the Badlands Hive or the Northern Hive? How many changelings imagined that the Queen-in-Stone could save them all, if only they could reach her past the Crystal Tyrant? How many changelings infiltrated the palace? How many laid sight on Cheval’s statue? How many actually touched it and felt the faintest glimmer of hope before they were found and killed?
Do you think any of the more independent changelings, the kind like Double Time – the kind like Pharynx or Ocellus – ever made direct appeals to Equestria to get Cheval’s statue? To the Dragonlord in the name of the closeness that Thorax enjoyed with Ember? To Twilight Sparkle? To Spike? How often where they spurned? Or do you think the leaders and movers and shakers ever listened? Do you think that Round 2 fight that should have happened by everything we know about Twilight ever happened? How did Flurry pull victory from her ass over it?
Or do you think it didn’t happen? Did an entire continent of leaders, of movers and shakers, of people who knew that changelings could be good, were good and decent, decide to do nothing? To simply sit aside and let the society and culture of the Badlands Hive and the Northern Hive just die?
If the latter is the case, then that would make Celestia, and Luna, and Twilight, and all the other leaders complacent in genocide too. But fortunately, Cheval is around to save the changeling species, at least, even if two entire cultures are now gone.
We’ll circle back to that fact before this fic is done. But I'm not in a state where I can discuss it right now. I tried to, and after re-editing the comment about a half-dozen times I still think it comes across as far too scathing when I'm genuinely trying to identify a fundamental narrative problem in this series. Plus it would have made this whole thing about four times as long as it already is.
So, that's where I stand at the moment. Oh, that, and the fact that my list of questions stands at 42.
I feel bad for cheering for Flurry last chapter. The feels are real.
Can family save us?
One thing that's really bugging me is how did Celestia and Luna react when they heard about what Flurry did to Twilight? Did they ever find what actually happened during the Fight?
Cause I'm calling shenanigans if they knew exactly what happened and didn't confront Flurry about it. Surely she should face some repercussions for what she did, even if it's just some stern talking and warnings from Celestia.
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We can only hope. But then again we’ve seen what Hope gets us in this series.
9623891
SEE the second half of 9623891
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Ponyville. Where the safeword is always "friendship problem."
Oof. I know it's been quite some time, but oof.
In any case, that's one heck of a hook for the next installment. And one heck of a propaganda job by Flurry. Of course, that's in her seat of power. The rest of the world might see her acts very differently indeed.
You know, something I wonder about Cheval's release...is it just to give her and her family a chance to say goodbye before Flurry executes her? I mean...Flurry has apparently spent the last 50 years exterminating all changelings in Equestria and the Empire, running a propaganda machine that made sure they'd only be remembered as irredeemable monsters...but releasing Cheval would potentially undo all that unless she somehow forgot Cheval was pregnant when she was petrified, or in any case that she's a queen. So yeah, either Cheval's on death row and she doesn't know it yet...or her release comes with strings that involve making this story live up to its title...
9630033
In fairness, the propaganda museum in the Crystal Empire is not necessarily indicative of what the world's opinion of changelings is.
9629635
Great, GREAT!
Now I've going to have that stuck in my head for 6 months..... AGAIN!
It's amazingly catchy, isn't it?
9630083
Yeah. I loved that show's more serious moment.
9630083
How do you think I feel? I've been anticipating the need to post it in memoriam for the changeling race since this story was first published. Hasn't left my head since May 10th already.
Does he have a brother?
Who did a stint as the Element of Laughter?
A brother named...
...named...
(Aw, c'mon my Lord Satan, do I GOTTA?...)
9630083
9630088
9630093
If this should be our final stand,
we will stand together with pride
We will honour the past, and fight to the last,
it will be a good way to die
It matters not, if the cause is lost,
and we can not stop the tide
We will fight to the end, and then fight again,
it will be a good way to die
Our time is short, our chance is grim,
but I will not give into fear
I can face death with an open heart,
if I know that you are near
And if I must die, I'll be with you Kai,
full of pride, at your side
I live now for you my love,
it's a good way to die
This moment will live on through time,
if anyone ever asks why
The Brunnen-G did not fall on their knees,
you will know they found a good way to die
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4RPjOSZjuk
9630068
Maybe, but given all the effort she put into her changeling genocide, I find it hard to believe she'd just let it be undone. Like I said, I worry that there's strings attached to her agreeing to let Cheval out of her stone. I also worry that the other alicorns are once again gonna be useless in preventing it if Flurry is planning something worse with her sister...
9630268
Ever read Heretics of Dune? Because the closest thing to a happy ending I can see for this story is a rough parallel to God-Emperor Leto’s plan in that book. Except that it gives too much credit and is too apologetic towards Flurry’s actions. Frank Herbert spent three books setting up Leto’s actions as necessary. All we’ve seen in this is bad decision after dumb decision after stupid decision from people who should have known better. This world isn’t grim because “that’s life”, it’s grim because they MADE it grim because Jaxie refused to let them improve their world even when they had every reason to try and every tool they needed to succeed.
More on that later when we reach the end of the fic, if I ever find a way to articulate it in a way that at least keeps the scathing to a minimum even if I can’t remove it entirely.
Flurry should not be a free mare. There is very, very little in me that would lead me to believe that she should even be a living mare. In fact, fuck Flurry, she deserves to die...and yet at the same time, there’d be no emotional satisfaction in it. Cheval could tear out her throat with her fangs or somehow siphon Flurry’s love until she’s dead into feeding her clutch of eggs and all it would prompt from me is “that is less than Flurry deserves”. And I doubt it would bring much happiness to Cheval in any event, nor Cadance, nor anyone.
There is no happiness left in this fic. Just morbid curiosity.
9629592
She probably used the sedition laws to kill the nobles and changelings both.
9630342
Dude. Its a my little pony fanfic. Don't take it so hard.
9630480
I mean, I figured as much, it just seems like a totally dropped plot point.
Chapter 6!
"Even those who didn’t know what a changeling looked like could see she was not a pony."
A sentence that has a number of possible implications.
Among other things, apparently either the education system doesn't feature pictures of old changelings (seems implausible), or a number of ponies aren't good at remember things they learned in history class (seems plausible :D).
...Ah. Or some of them are just foals too young to have reached that part yet. Eh. :)
"Lens bulbs"
Interesting. Magical combination of the lens and the flash, perhaps?
...I'm a little confused over whether they skipped the line or waited in it; the text doesn't seem clear to me on it, and I could see either way.
"“Pay what you want,” she explained, was a tax on ponies with anxiety."
Ah, yes, not sure I've been in that particular situation, but a familiar sort of feeling, at least.
"even any pegasai"
I think I recall "pegasai" indeed being a valid plural, but as "pegasi" is both more common in ponyfic and was used at least once earlier in this story, I thought I'd check to see if this was a typo or something.
"“How many yak does it take to screw in a lightbulb?” he asked. “Two! One to change the bulb, and one to willingly collaborate with the darkness.”
Then Twilight’s yak friend cried"
You know, I can't imagine why Laughter went to the gryphon instead of him.
"and they all had to go learn a friendship lesson about racism. Cheval had seen Twilight learn that lesson already, so she didn’t interrupt."
This too strikes me as some very nice phrasing in a way I find myself presently unable to quite articulate. :D
"A few ponies noticed her, but Cheval’s handlers said it was fine."
Which I'm sure completely removed any concerns the tour group may have had.
"Cheval stood head and shoulders above the other ponies"
And some interesting phrasing of categorization again.
"been trained her youth, and"
"been trained in her youth, and"?
"fifth in line for the throne of Equestria"
...Which throne? Does Luna, in this timeline, still not have one of her own? :D But more seriously, aye, I do wonder how the succession works there.
"The tour group, collectively, looked back at Cheval. But Cheval said nothing, and after a few seconds, Misty let out an awkward cough."
This is hilarious, just also kind of terrible imagining what these ponies (including interesting categorization) are currently having to deal with and laughing anyway. :D
"All other races who touch the powers of Harmony this way are intrinsically good, with ponykind being the most notable example."
"I mean, mind you, that still didn't stop a lot of ponies and members of other species from siding with Amaryllis, or individuals of other species from being great or minor villains in their own rights, which you might think could perhaps call into question the entire concept of a whole species being 'intrinsically good', but don't worry: that's only true for an insufficiently patriotic definition of 'good'."
"With a practiced smile, Misty turned to the group"
When did she turn away? Wasn't she walking backwards to keep facing them?
"“How?” Cheval asked. “How did that happen?”"
...Er. Well, I'm pretty sure it had to do with Princess Flurry Heart "saving all of ponykind".
(Though I do kind of wonder if she was actually successful in wiping out all the other changelings, or whether the Equestrian princesses hid many of them from her. I mean, assuming Flurry hasn't also conquered Equestria, which I don't think we can rule out here yet, she likely wouldn't have all the access and resources she'd need to ferret out changelings being actively sheltered and concealed by the government, and once the heat's off, well, they're changelings; it's not as if them disguising themselves would be a problem, so that just leaves integrating them into the population without arousing concern among the people or the attention of Imperial spies. Though, admittedly, I'm not sure yet how difficult that would be.)
So, they just... left? To parts unclear, it sounds like it may even be? I don't think that counts as "extinct", yet, unless they're all dead; at least looking at Wikipedia, which matches what I thought it was, extinction would be the last member dying, not the species losing the ability to reproduce. Mm. Could be a simplification for the added museumgoer/citizen, though. I mean, that Flurry had a pregnant changeling queen in stone doesn't seem to have been widely thought about, possibly not even widely known (Taking a bit after Celestia and her own younger sister there, perhaps?).
Of course, that assumes those changelings actually did leave, rather than being "resettled east".
(I did also think of the possibility that the species might not have been without reproductive capacity because of one or more still-hidden hives somewhere in the world, but then, we're speaking here of what the official story is, and the official story wouldn't be including hives the officials don't know about either way. And also either way, we know that the official story left out that changelings were known to a few in power to not be without reproductive capacity.
But I suspect any hidden hives still were unknown to Flurry and her followers; if any'd been found, I expect they'd have been transformed into Glorious Victories rather than left alone and not mentioned.)
By the way, this was earlier and I wasn't sure about commenting on it then --
[realizes that this was less than five paragraphs after Twilight rushing back to pay more bits]
Ah... eheh, anyway! :D
So, yeah, I wasn't sure about commenting on it then, but since we've just had a "Northern Changeling Hive", was the capital H in "of Amaryllis’s Hive. Twilight’s" deliberate, being another valid name, or a typo? I could potentially see either.
"I understand this is a museum and you’re a historical artifact, so we can make some exceptions to the rules."
Pffhahaha, oh, more simultaneously terrible and hilarious text. :D Nicely phrased there.
I'm now also thinking back to the archaeologists in the show interacting with Rockhoof. Not quite the same thing, checking the transcript, but still similar enough to add a little extra humor for me.
Ahh, okay, so Cheval is known; everyone was just too polite, scared of Cheval, and/or Loyal To Her Most Great Majesty Flurry Heart whose Illustrious Protectors of the Realm are standing right there and say it's just fine.
And upgrading Cheval to trying to murder Flurry in the historical record still is not necessarily not following in Celestia's my-people-thought-my-sister-was-a-cannibal-for-hundreds-of-years hoofsteps.
"the entrance to the Changeling exhibit"
"the entrance to the changeling exhibit"?
"And there’s rumors there might be a previously unknown hive in the Amber Isles."
Oh, huh, so I'm not the only one who had the thought. Though I'm not sure about the Amber Isles; depending on how enthusiastic Flurry's been about sending out scouts, if I were a hidden changeling hive (and patting myself on the back with no small amount of relief for staying hidden instead of trying to get involved in conquest and/or friendship, because look how that went), the place there were rumors of my presence might be somewhere I'd be careful to not be.
"looked at eachother. Sky"
"looked at each other. Sky"?
Chapter 7!
...Hm. "here", and "the industrial district", period. Canterlot is mentioned, but I'm wondering if this is an industrial district built in Ponyville, likely for the war (which could also explain why the factory was abandoned after the war's end).
"By the end of the first month, there were seven thousand changelings camped on Light Step’s lawn."
...So I think you're going to need more cots and a lot more affection.
(Also, I wonder why that engineering battalion was heading home, and where they were heading home from? Also interesting some of them chose to keep the uniforms, though under the circumstances... well, could be some significant pressures both ways.)
And it seems like many changelings really did leave. So perhaps Flurry just kept her ears out for news of a queen, and otherwise decided to let the others die out over time; if she didn't plan to attack Equestria, I suspect Equestria's expected reaction to "Hey, might if I march in and cleanse those refugees you're sheltering? 'Kay, thanks." prevented her from even attempting it even if she would have otherwise wanted to actively finish the job.
Though I also suspect it's not a coincidence that Cheval wasn't unpetrified until the dieoff was nearly complete.
"the changeling from the mob said"
...Hm. Wonder what significant the choice of that phrasing vs. the one used earlier might have, if any in particular.
"all seven-thousand changelings"
"all seven thousand changelings"?
"For six months, a thousand changelings worked menial jobs in the greater Ponyville area and pooled all the money to send that nymph to a university in Canterlot. They all knew Twilight was only being polite. But it made them feel better."
And this is also kind of terrible, a little bit, not as much as before, but/because with sweetness instead of humor. :)
"each wearing a prominent purple pin that said: “Secret Shapeshifter”"
Nice solution. :)
(Though, hm, should there be a period after that last quotation mark? "“Secret Shapeshifter”."?)
"Bon In flagrante with two"
"Bon in flagrante with two"?
"one of the Lyra’s snapped"
"one of the Lyras snapped"?
"all the ponies in the group around her were worker caste"
And more of that categorization. ...Thoooough this one I'm wondering a little if it's a typo; I'm not sure. I think for now I'll assume it's not.
Though it did also confuse me a bit, briefly, wondering if they were currently shapeshifted.
...Hum, but further complicated, I think "ponies" may sound a little better there, just in terms of the flow of the sentence... Eh. Well, moving on, anyway. :)
"saved seven-thousand changelings"
"saved seven thousand changelings"?
"Double’s wings buzzed, tapping against her shell. It made a sound like falling rain."
[looks back at Chapter 2]
"I was thinking of naming him after his uncle. Shining Armor."
Also his father? Or, hm, I wonder how that works, if the genetic pattern can be stored for indefinite later uses, if new material is required after some number of clutches, or if parthenogenesis or an equivalent can be used under some circumstances.
"in old Equestrian, it"
I'm guessing "old" was indeed supposed to not be capitalized here, but I thought I'd check. Though I may be getting this universe's Old Equestrian, if one's even been defined (I'm not sure, and I'm too low on time to check at the moment), mixed up with another universe's Old Equestrian, another reason why I thought I'd check here, just in case. :)
...And, yeah, the more I think on it, the more uncertain I become; maybe it was supposed to be "Old Equestrian".
re Gallant's adventures:
...Huh. :D
...Hm. Let's see, Cheval was petrified for fifty-two years, and the war started shortly after. The foal who would be Gallant arrived with Light Step and Double Time shortly after the war's end, only a few months old. Yet... Gallant is fifty-three when when Cheval is unpetrified? But that would have made him about a year old when the war started. Well, admittedly, with his adventures, maybe there was some time travel at one point and he came back at the moment he left a decade later in his personal timeline or something, but I think this might just be a timeline fault? Unless I'm missing something.
...Though. I mean, I'm not sure how you'd work it in, maybe just an author's note saying "Yes, that's not a mistake" or something, but the time travel thing is actually maybe potentially plausible here, and it wouldn't need the descriptions or behaviors of his age and the like changed.
Alright! Let's see what the comments are like this time.
9629570
"Yes, Thorax."
Oh, interesting! Wonder exactly how that worked? I can think of at least some possibilities, but I'm not sure which is more likely, or if it's even one of them.
Oh, hm, also, thought about that communist superweapon, which was brought back to mind by seeing it mentioned in another comment: I wonder if there's still an organized communist state out there, or if these were rogue communists or something.
9629656
...Oh, bother; I wonder if FIMFiction didn't notify me of your reply at all, or if maybe it came in while I was in the story? ...Hm. No, no, timestamp doesn't fit the latter, and I don't have even a marked-as-read notification. I hope I didn't miss any of your other replies; please let me know if I did. :)
Anyway:
"All typos corrected! With my thanks of course. "
Thanks, and you're welcome. :)
"The castle took a few knocks during the war."
Ah, thanks. And I guess there was only so much repairing they wanted to do in here, balanced against changing things.
(Though now I'm wondering just where the water came from. Weaponized weather? Attack broke some plumbing? Attack caused a leak which some non-weaponized weather later came through? Eh, there are possibilities. :))
"Well, Twilight does like Cheval more than Flurry right now, so she is the favorite niece. But if Twilight were to include nephews, Gallant would probably take it."
Heh. :)
(And thanks.)
"Once you realize she doesn't bite, she's really quite nice."
Most of the time. Almost always, really; if one doesn't count her hostility towards Amaryllis, there's just the... incidents in Griffonstone. Oh, and, uh, the whole "coup", thing, and what she did to Double Time as part of that... but those are all, really, only a very small portion of her life.
"Once she got her cutie mark, she stopped aging."
Oh, thanks!
"If the people won't love me they will learn to fear me instead!"
:)
"Flurry has been masterminding the events of this story -- she's the one who decided when Cheval would be unfrozen, and that Cadence would be the first one to see her. But she's been notable in her absence."
Aye, and I have, indeed, noticed that. I have multiple ideas for what Flurry might be thinking and feeling about this; we'll see which, if any, of them are correct, I expect.
""Murder is one thing, but this show is TV-Y!""
:D
"Really, from a certain point of view, this is all Flurry's fault."
Weeeeelll... aye. Definitely aye, though the "certain point of view bit" is very important if we also have the "all", given the complicated and not fully known web of events that led to this situation.
9629755
Except the war seems to have been over for decades now. The Princesses may be planning to do something about it eventually, but they've clearly not been in a tremendous hurry so far, I think.
9630855
Lauren Faust’s original plan was for Celestia to be Queen, with Luna in a firmly junior position. Hasbro made her change that since queens tend to be associated with evil in pop culture. But, while the fandom does like to portray Celestia and Luna as co-equal diarchs, the show itself has stuck pretty close to the idea that Celestia is the actual ruler (for example, in the original Hearth’s Warming episode, Spike opens the pageant with “long ago, before the peaceful rule of Celestia”, with no mention of Luna. If Luna were a ruler in her own right that’d be an unforgivable faux pas on Spike’s part).
This series reminds me so much of Rated Ponystar's works and I'm loving every bit of it
9630011
Celestia and Luna just seem to do nothing in this series.
Light Step has grown so much since The Third Wheel
This story makes a certain line in A Foreign Education really interesting:
Now there are a few implications now
1) Cheval was incorrect. This statement wasn't said by an omnipotent narrator but an individual character, who might be wrong. There isn't a destiny, or it doesn't have a grand unifying plan.
2) This is somehow the best of all possible worlds. A really depressing outcome, because it creates a Justifiable Genocide and Police State.
3) Destiny as a force is flawed:
to use a metaphor, I remember reading about an AI that was being tested to sort through a list as efficiently as possible. The solution it found was to delete all items in the list. An empty list is a sorted list.
Similarly, in this context, destiny found a flawed solution to a war: "fighting between ponies and changelings? Get rid of one side. no more fighting." Even if it's "temporary" since "Cheval brings back the changelings" is probably an outcome, it still feels like incredibly "Flawed" decision making.
4) Destiny isn't flawed, but it's working on a scale that's outside of any sensible timeline.
This is a pretty miserable end result on the scale of 50 years, but it'll have a massive payoff in 100 years, or something like that. Similar to argument 2, but acknowledging "no this is not the best outcome for these characters right now, but everything happens for a reason." It still carries the implications of "All the awful things were justified," though, and creates the problem of "if this system is the case, then there's not really much reason for people TO put stock in destiny, because it's a force that will put you in the grinder as part of a solution it'll come up with."
5) Destiny isn't flawed, but the thing it's trying to maximize isn't really true happiness.
Evolution isn't really that "Great" a force. It isn't trying to make an ideal organism, just an organism that will pass it's genes along, and no matter what the side effects are, whatever adaptation that gets that done is worthwhile. Destiny in this case might be similar, maximizing something else that isn't an equally just and happy society.
Of course all these answers preclude questions of "how much influence does "destiny" really have compared to the influence of individual people, which is just a rehashing of the question of "Why does God allow bad things to happen" which is really just a bottomless pit to start racing down.
9630894
Hm. Not sure if that's the case here, but I don't think I'd seriously thought of it as a possibility; thanks.
9631648
As is the case for all things, my thoughts on the matter are pretty well summed up by a Babylon 5 quote.
"You know, I used to think it was awful that life was so unfair. Then I thought, wouldn't it be much worse if life were fair, and all the terrible things that happen to us come because we actually deserve them? So, now I take great comfort in the general hostility and unfairness of the universe."
— Marcus Cole, Babylon 5
Oh, you also missed an additional possibility:
6) Cheval was correct, but Flurry is screwing it all up anyway.
9629604
RIP cinnamon roll
Thinking about it more...
It's odd that the griffin faction were turned into Soviet Style Communists. Or rather, it's odd that we were shown that and then we got to see so little of them. In terms of story role, they're mostly portrayed as just accomplices of Amaryllis, who joined not due to any ideological reason, but realpolitik strategic positioning. I can imagine that maybe they were made this way simply because of the story allowances it would create (it's easy for Cheval to escape the influence of her monarch family by entering a country built on the removal of a monarch) or just to show that time has passed and this isn't the world the reader is used to, but it feels like there's thematic possibility left unexplored here.
I mean, for one, with at least the crystal empire in this story, criticisms of a benevolent monarchy are shown to be entirely correct, and bits of those criticisms were still visible in the past equestria, even if in much less extremes. Flurry had a secret police, Celestia had official censors trailing interviews. In both cases, it's explicitly stated "the alicorns are above the law, and only follow it for the sake of appearance and social cohesion, and that can be pulled away in an instant."
Now I'm not saying that the gryphon state as portrayed here is a utopia and just. They did join with a fundamentally awful force, attack a civilian center, and apparently threatened the world with a superweapon? But this seems to be an "every side is flawed" kind of story, whether direct wrongdoing or inaction. And the portrayal doesn't seem as "bad" as a soviet-like state normally is, though it could just be due to the POV. There's rationing, but its not described as critically low (a pie is described as taking a months worth of sugar, I think it was, but it's also implied that ponies eat more sweets, and the numbers could just be calibrated to gryphon expectations.) There was mail surveillance, but considering the official censor boards and police state, it was an endemic problem, not just one minimized to a communist state. It showed a professor that criticized the vanguard party, or at least unthinking devotion to said vanguard party.
I feel like something can be said here for the idea of The Great Man theory of history, that massive historical changes come about because of gifted or exceptional individuals take the helm, whether it be an inventor or political leader or artist or whatever. Critics of said theory will point out larger forces and zeitgeists outside of these great individual actors. Britain didn't become an empire because of specific leaders, it became an empire because it had deposits of coal closer to the surface, allowing the country to climb the tech tree faster. I won't say that it's a theory solely criticized by the left (one of the earliest critics was Herbert Spencer, a proponent of Social Darwinism), nor that the left is immune to the allure of great man narratives (see the veneration of figures like Che or Lenin, ) but from my limited experience, criticisms of great man theories of history tend to pop up more in leftist critique than right wing critique.
Now whether or not the great man theory of history is true in real life, within the text of this story, it seems to be unquestionably true. There are magical forces that signal certain people as "great ones" meant to take the helm. And the world is fundamentally worse off for it. Not only because it subjects people as mere bystanders who live and die on the whims of these great ones, but because, in this universe, the process of becoming "great" fundamentally breaks you, at least in the case of alicornization. The changes involved in becoming a changeling queen might be psychologically damaging as well, but that might have been Cheval trying to rationalize. I may be misreading, but there's a sense that, with the reveal what shining said to Amaryllis, that her approach to rule was partially fueled by personal anxieties, and that Flurry's approach was partially fueled by the actions of Cheval, the personal taken to the grand stage.
Fittingly enough, unless I missed something, we never see a named "hero figure" that's a central part of the gryphon's cultural psyche.
I feel like there was a missed opportunity for a sort of dialectic. The stories in this cycle have mostly been about enduring. Characters are thrust into painful social roles and circumstances, as part of systems larger than themselves, and after suffering because of those roles, they eventually find ways to adapt and to hopefully do good within the roles they find themselves in. There doesn't seem to be any major "the role I'm in/the identity that's been given to me/something about the world itself it wrong, and I will outright reject it." or at least, any of that sort of intention that lasts. Cheval's and Flurry's coup can be seen as a sort of rebellion, but it was framed as both characters falling into inevitable roles, Destiny, and trying to minimize damage given that.
I'm not saying that this is a "wrong" approach. Stories with that sort of bent have their place in the world. Considering the number of failed or eventually corrupt revolutions in history, fervently and uncritically calling for rebellion can also be wrong headed. (One of my favorite creators, Ikuhara, essentially has a constant thematic through line of "the revolution will fail, but you have to do it anyways") Like I said, a missed opportunity for dialectic. If the communist gryphons could be active ideological players instead of just side players, these themes might have been explored in more detail.
Of course, this sort of thinking veers dangerously close to "saying what the text should be" instead of "judging the text for what it is," but it was some thoughts I couldn't get out of my head.
9631816
9631921
To be fair, there is one of these for each and every situation.
9630176
This, this, oh jeez, such a dumb silly concept to run with
9631648
9635562
While it's meant to be somewhat ambiguous, I will point out that this point of view is echoed throughout the series:
By contrast, Cheval repeatedly references the inevitability of destiny in A Foreign Education, particularly with regards to how she views herself. Her feelings on destiny as a positive and irresistible force are her own feelings -- and not shared by many other characters in the setting.
Jumping for a moment into Authorial Intention (tm), the reason that ponies in this setting believe that alicorns are divine is because Celestia says so. The reason everypony listens to things Celestia says is because she rules Equestria. And Celestia rules Equestria because she's a demigod with vast magical powers, including the ability to control the sun.
In the Equestria shown in these stories, alicorns are a breed apart. They're powerful, immortal, held in a state of religious reverence, and entitled to rule over the mortal races simply by virtue of being alicorns. Note that one of Cheval's titles is "Peer to Alicorns," because otherwise she wouldn't be considered her own sister's equal.
This Equestria has laws, but it doesn't have the rule of law. It has traditional rights, but those aren't the same thing as inalienable rights. Twilight says that having citizens executed without trial is morally wrong, but she doesn't say there's any kind of code or stricture preventing Flurry from doing it. Flurry is, after all, an autocrat.
In this series, the rules of alicorns is possibly divine, but it is unquestionably absolute.
This fits the intention. Griffonstone was supposed to be "kind of a bad place to live," not a dystopia. The International Party is what communism might have ended up like if Stalin had never risen to power -- a little softer, a little more intellectual, and much more concerned with foreign affairs.
I am delighted by all of this, particularly the observation that the world is worse for this fact, though I will point out that Double Time has a large impact on the course of history despite not being one of these "great people."
...okay, I wasn't planning to write that story.
But now I think I want too. Thank you. That was really insightful.