Every action taken is like dropping a pebble in a pond, creating ripples that extend ever outward. Every choice has consequences, good and bad... Putting on a Crown may have changed Sunset Shimmer's life...but it also Changed two worlds...
Page generated in 0.026 seconds
Total duration
642 users online
780,977 hits today, 1,872,792 yesterday
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
Designed and coded by knighty & Xaquseg - © 2011-2024
Support us
SubStar
Chat!
Discord
Follow us
Twitter
MLP: Friendship is Magic® - © 2024 Hasbro Inc.®
Fimfiction is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Hasbro Inc.®
Yeah, Celestia did rub on both Sunset and Twilight since she's a mother figure to both. Yeah, human Celestia doesn't need to blame herself for not being prepared for evil she demons. Also, it's nice to see that Sunset has come to realize that she had part of the blame for her fallout with Princess Celestia.
That title does indeed apply well. And a lot of people seem to agree, given how often it is used as either one of Princess Celestia's titles from the Warring Tribes and Nightmare Moon eras, or as her most powerful spell.
An interesting fleshing out of the Windigo story. Pretty true to form with just enough added detail that feels coherent.
Also, yeah, you really did ramp up the Sirens to truly horrible villains, and the results are as one might expect. The adults really got the short end of it, but maybe they can learn from the ponies. You don't deal with that by yourself. Group therapy sessions are a thing for a reason.
10395121
Sunset has had a lot of personal revelations over the course of things, but she’s still got a way to go.
10395153
I thought a lot about what “Hate” really is, and what Windigos would really be stirring up...and about what kind of event they would have to cause for it to reverberate down through over a thousand years of cultural and drift. Because we dont think about stuff like that, about hoe much just a few centuries or even just a few decades can change an event and how its perceived. Look at something as far reaching as WWII, and compare how a young adult today reacts/feels about it versus someone who was born in the 60s or someone who lived through it. Theres a definite shift in attitude, but ponies, by contrast, seem still extremely intent on driving home this lesson of a secular and historical holiday with all the worried wariness of “this is why we sacrifice to the volcano god.” Emotiphages are terrifying monsters all the way around.
And yes, in that same vein, i wanted the Sirens to be horrific...all of the emotiphages really will be, because i have in depth reasons for their origins and why theyre so...broken and wrong and twisted. The Sirens have been around for thousands of years, feeding on nasty emotions and willing to do whatever it took to wring more food out of their targets. The idea that theres something wrong with torturing your food never registers because its food. And the Sirens have this sort of...Vampire outlook on humans, seeing them as so far beneath them, that the fact that humans are thinking and intelligent barely registers. For creatures who can sense emotions, their Empathy is broken.
10395246
Yup. Sunset’s got some work ahead of her in Arc 2.
And the way i was looking at it is that despite the show cheating with basic body vectors, in universe has to have more variety in terms of terms of phenotypes for the ponies. When you take snooty bluebloods who think theyre better than others with it, they come up with all kinds of arbitrary measurements to mock or diminish undesirables. In this case, i was thinking everything from horn length and thickness, to the direction and way it spirals, to any imperfections, to things like how straight or curved it is would all be targets. And in my head, i see Sunset’s horn as being slightly longer than average, but it also possesses a slight upward curve that ends in a slightly sharper point than most canterlot born aristo-brats. Its not really that different, but it was used to put her down.
10395298
I would think that for any emotivore that dealt purely with negative emotions it'd almost have to be, pretty much as an evolutionary trait. Empathy means you feel bad for them feeling the way you need them to feel in order to eat, and thus you eat less well than someone who doesn't.
One could argue that it would apply less for changelings since they eat a positive emotion, but if it has to be focused on them or at least directed towards them to count, or if it depletes the source of the emotion, that would cause just as many problems, and probably you'd end up with the same issues as a negatively focused species.
10395121
Ah, but the tendency towards self blame was one of the traits that Celestia imprinted on Sunset, so Principal Celestia following suit with blaming herself for everything is perfectly in character for her.
I always find it so strange when people make the sirens sympathetic or "misunderstood". I genuinely enjoy it when they're depicted as the monsters they are. Even in Backstage Pass, when they show up again, they're not 'redeemed'. They're still nasty pieces of work, just without their mind control powers.
The sadistic choices that they put on Tia and Lulu, the things they threatened to do to them, forcing Tia to spill her secrets? All of that cements that these sirens are monsters. Even Sontata, who's usually depicted as being the 'token good teammate' in fanon (which she very much is not in cannon) is so delightfully nasty.
This sounds like the Hagard scene in TLU where he's looking at Amalthea, and realizes that she's a unicorn from the way she moves, the way she looks, etc.
Thank you for that. That was beautifully written and ran the emotional spectrum. Looooved the sadistic Sirens. Daaaark. And Luna is the hero here. Sometimes you gotta slap a sibling upside the head.
10395320
Oh yeah. The most toxic environment in the world is a fucking middle school, and high school is not far behind. Ponies might not be as awful as the humans, but they have their moments.
10395326
Mmmhmmm....Like i said, I've got plans for the Emotiphages. Big. Important. Plans. Bruhahaha. *breaks off into a coughing fit* Isnt it interesting, after all, that we have Emotiphages in canon associated with Air (Windigos), Water (Sirens), and to an extent Earth (Changelings, who look and live like bugs.) Seems like we're missing an element there.
10395405
"Even your way of standing perfectly still...they were all my spies!" Yeah. There's inspiration there, in the whole thing, because what came to mind in that moment of describing Sunset, turning from the window WAS Amalthea when they first arrive in Haggard's Castle in the movie, and she's looking out the window, and Haggard looks over to her and she turns, and there's just something so....powerful in that moment with little to no dialogue, this unicorn trapped in a human body, with eyes far too old to be the human girl they belong to. I realized the very real parallel in that, even though I didn't intend it initially, and I just decided to run with it, because it was so perfect. Sunset really is this being of two worlds, caught between them...she's a unicorn and a sorceress of unimaginable power and knowledge, with an intellect that's well and truly on the level of a genius, but...she's also a child in so many ways, particularly emotionally, a child who has never actually given herself the chance to BE a child, who is only now really coming to grasp and explore and understand her own emotions and the feelings of those around her. It creates such an interesting dichotomy to me, these two extremes, and its one of the reasons I not only love writing for her, but why I relate to her so much. And having Principal Celestia REALIZE that...it makes her the first person in the human world to make that connection about Sunset Shimmer...which I felt was...poetic and appropriate, and drawing on the way that window scene from The Last Unicorn always made me feel--even now, everytime I watch it, hundreds of viewings, and over three decades later--that sense of being confronted with something so "other" we have a hard time wrapping our brains around it...I wanted that moment of intense...disorientation and epiphany to be there in Celestia. I just hope it succeeded.
(In case you haven't figured out, The Last Unicorn is my absolute all time favorite movie ever, lol, and it hurts me that so few people have ever even heard of it.)
10395447
Ah yes the Last Unicorn, remember watching it last year. Looks like its time for Celestia and Luna to put their child development classes to work in concern to Sunset. Also, kinda noticed that based on the clues we see in canon, Princess Celestia acted more like a mom to Twilight than she did to Sunset which is probably the result of her trying to not repeat the same mistakes she did with Sunset. Also, yeah SIrens are evil, and since Starswirl banished them 1000 years ago when they arrived during the medieval period and proceeded to live during the next few centuries of constant warfare and hate among humans.
10395505
I actually think that she acted LESS like a Mother to Twilight than Sunset, comparing the behavior in the episodes to the Sunset origin comic. Twilight Sparkle had a mom already, after all. But there were definite differences in how she handled the two that suggest she didn't want a repeat of Sunset's attitude.
Yeah..Um...They've been around a lot longer than a paltry thousand years in the Rubicon universe. Starswirl the Obnoxious is getting a major overhaul because I found him and his squad of sycophants to be redundant, unnecessary, and really just poor canon all the way around, and that garbage about "oh, we shat out the tree of harmony" is, in a word, stupid. I've also overhauled the timeline, because as I pointed out previously, if we take it to all be "1000 years ago", then 1000 years ago was a very busy few years. I'm spreading the timeline out to be more sensible and to better encompass all the development and stuff that went on in magic pony land, and subsequently, adjusting the human world as well.
To put it in perspective, in this story, Adagio and her "sisters" are partially to blame for the Greek myth.
10395530
Sunset is a unicorn, no matter what body she's in. The idea that Sunset does pony things in a human body is a hill I'm willing to die on, dammit. :P
And hey, like everything else, there's a long and involved story reason behind the magic's shift. We'll get there. Bruhahah.
10395533
Well, we see her always hugging twilight and in season 7 flashback we see her act like a mom concerning Twilight and making friends. But yeah she tried different approaches with Twilight so as to not repeat Sunset. I liked Starswirl being an a-hole since it showed Twilight that our idols aren't perfect but the whole origins of the Elements were meh in canon. Holy shit, the Dazzlings have been on Earth since the Bronze Age. Will say that Twilight had a better support network than Sunset since she basically had 2 moms, her father, Shining, Cadence, and Spike while Sunset only had Celestia. Also, wonder if Twilight was bullied over her horn in kindergarten since we know she had some traumatic experience there.
10395447
I'd say you did. Just the sense of otherness and strange beauty, like Celestia is realizing: "She may look like a girl, but she's something more, and less, than that. This is a being from a place that I cannot fathom, yet she's hurting, just like me."
I think one of the most powerful moments in The Last Unicorn is when the unicorn's been turned into a human, and one of her reactions is "I can feel this body dying all around me." It was that particular scene that inspired Sunset's post-ascension breakdown in Phoenix-born.
The whole movie is so beautifully melancholy. Even King Haggard is painfully tragic in a way. Here we have someone who once experienced pure joy (seeing a unicorn) in his youth, and was so desperate to recapture that moment of happiness that he unleashed a demonic force on the world to claim all of them for himself.
10395597
Oh yes, that whole scene, where she wakes up in the human body. Where shes stricken with pure horror at her own hands and then that expression when she feels for a horn thats not there anymore. (Interestingly, the way sunset reacts when she loses her memories at the end of Forgotten Friendship has some serious mirroring to that exact scene visually. Couple that with the similarities between amalthea and pony Celestia’s designs and i have to wonder about who was the fan.)
And i loved the way Sunset had her breakdown in your story! It was super powerful, in so many ways.
I should stop before i ramble for days on the movie lol.
OwO what's this, a second update today~?
Damn, this really got dark and makes sense the adults would take it so much harder... and good for Luna being there to kick Tia's rear when necessary.
Yeah, this is more or less what I had imagined.
10395533
10395548
My headcanon is that a big part of the difference about how Sunset and Twilight ended up was largely because Twilight had a solid family to fall back on and "patch the holes" so to speak on Celestia's failings, while Sunset didn't (I'm also going with the latter being orphaned). Plus Celestia apparently absolutely sucking at family related stuff (See: Luna, later, Sunset).
THIS. YES. There are no words for me to indicate how much I support this. S6 finale was such a disappointment to me. I think every fanfic I've read dealing with the origin of the Tree did a better job than canon.
Someone in one of the Discord groups I'm in argued that since apparently in canon Celestia had her "1111th" anniversary as a Princess during S8 (I think), it still is believable for all that stuff happening in the span of the 111 years before the banishment, comparing it to all that happened during the 20th century. While I concede ha makes a good point I still feel having Celestia ruling for just 1111 years feels... unimaginative, for lack of a better word. A personal idea I've toyed with is have Discord's rampage happen 2000 years ago, for an even 1000 years of Sister rule before Luna's fall.
10395691
Actually it's the season 7 ending since season 6 finale saw the Changelings transform and overthrow Chrysalis. The Pillars are the season 7 finale. Yeah, Twilight had her family to act as a support network for her albeit one that failed to teach her friendship, and season 1 Twilight was kinda an asshole.
10395713
Yeah my bad, not sure why I keep getting those two seasons mixed up.
10395691
Yup. I rated the story the way I did because I knew it was gonna go into some dark corners. Trust me, before Arc 2 is over, I will be earning that Mature rating, so buckle up. Its about to get Hellish in here. The Sirens are just the beginning of the bad mojo. After all, every action has consequences, good and bad, in this story, even the most innocuous things. >:}
Twilight and Sunset are also very different personalities, for all their similarities. There's an arrogant confidence to Sunset in both her canon appearances and her comic backstory that Twilight Sparkle never had. Not to mention that temper. Sunset was never afraid to challenge Celestia--we see her fighting in the comic back story, and her intent with the Crown was to go back to Equestria, likely to challenge the Solar Princess. Compare that to Twilight, who is prone to panic attacks and meltdowns and worries and stresses over disappointing her teacher or failing.
But yeah, I feel like a big help is that Twilight didn't NEED a mother in Celestia--she had one. She had a family to fall back on, that she knew loved her, even if she was living on her own at the school. I'm sure she saw them on holidays and such, and I'd wager that they at least checked in on her. Plus her brother was in the guard, so...he would have been close by. Sunset, by contrast, even though its never explicitly stated either doesn't have a family at all OR if she did, they were very distant and absentee. (I go the orphan route, because even shitty and absentee parents get mentioned. *points at Rarity and Sweetie Belle.*) So if she was lacking strong family support for any reason, she would have looked to the adults in her life to fill that role--in this case, that primary adult was Celestia.
And yes, Celestia is TERRIBLE with family stuff. I have...plans to handle that. You'll see. There's a couple of spaced out interludes that happen in Equestria to address the "Celestia is a crappy mom" problem. I think people will enjoy that.
The truth is, I personally don't care for much beyond Season Five. Season Six had some good episodes, but it started to feel...like they were really hurting for ideas, and I pretty much cherry picked a few episodes out of seasons seven and eight after reading summaries. It just felt like it jumped the shark, and hard. For Rubicon, I'm pretty much ignoring just about anything after Season Five's finale. I have plans, anyway, for a lot of things, that will veer away from canon pretty hard, so...yeah..I try to stick to canon as much as possible, but...sometimes I've got to make creative decisions that step away from it. In the end, I feel like its more important to remain true to the characters and their personalities than to any of the 22 minute episodes.
Timeline wise, I'll probably put a loose one up in a blog post, but in Rubicon, Celestia and Luna have been around for...I think something like 5000 years, and all the shit with Starswirl was way before them. So was the warring tribes era.
10395751
I've felt the same thing. I was even wondering if there was some sort of exodus among the writing team after/during seasons 4-5 as IMO the drop in quality was noticeable. I know Lauren Faust left mid-season 2 but as far as I've been told the writing team was more or less the same for the rest of the series so who knows, maybe heavy Executive Meddling on Hasbro's part? *shrugs*
Oof. That was nasty. You give us very little as to what the Sirens did to the teachers, but what little we get paints a very dark picture. I have read a lot of fimfics where some or all of the Dazzlings turn over a new leaf. This is easily the most evil I've seen them, I'm more used to them being good guys by now. Bit if a shock, really.
So... When will she adopt her?