This story takes the end of season 8 in a different direction. What if Golly succeeded in draining all of the world's magic. What happened to Starlight Glimmer being trapped inside the magical orb as it lowered into the vortex into the ground? Are the Mane 6 forever trapped in Tartarus? And what of Sunset Shimmer and her world? Read on for answers to these questions and more!
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My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
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Including your sister and her most special student. Which is kind of sad actually.
They were completely duped by Cozy by that point. It's not like they would have listened to him.
This sudden jump to seize power seems a little rushed for someone with the patience of Cozy Glow.
I can't tell if hiding Cozy Glow's origin hurts the story by depriving the audience of their melodrama, or helps it by allowing you to write it without fear of having it critiqued, or be perceived as overblown.
Either way, having Sunset be the one to discover it was brilliant, not because she has memory reading powers, but because she is arguably the most empathetic of the cast, with a following of people who like her just for being Sunset. It sells the story as well as can be expected, with no first hand knowledge of her actual issues. That being said, it is a noticeable gap in the story.
I'm honestly confused as to why Cozy Glow didn't explain herself here. Admittedly I have some ideas, but I would like to hear how you describe it.
So I guess Sunset can only see what happens to people, not why they chose to act the way they did?
Looks at Luna, Discord, and Starlight Glimmer. "Yeah, sure."
This is a story with great concept, but the execution feels a little threadbare. I don't really know how else to describe it.
The jokes are fine, the characterization works (for the most part; Twilight comes off as being more stern than usual) but something about the immersion just doesn't grab me. Maybe character tone? I can't say for sure why. Regardless, it was a good read, so thank you for writing.
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Really? I had imagined it as just being her next step in a plan she refused to acknowledge wasn't going over so well.
Would you mind elaborating just a little on this?
I had chosen not to explore Cozy's origins for a few reasons:
I will agree though that Cozy "coming around" through the power of a single forced hug is a bit rushed. After the first bits of feedback, I've tried many times to re-work it, but each time it would just stall the story, or end up changing the ending I had in mind, and again, reformation wasn't the focus of the story. As a whole, though, I wouldn't say she was redeemed; more like brought out of her ridiculous fantasy world of being an empress into reality for the first time in a long time. She's going to be a different pony now, and it'll take quite a bit of rehabilitation and work on both her and Sunset's parts to bring her up to speed.
It's pretty much stated in the line here:
It also hints a little at her past that she's learned from, not to spend the effort to defend herself if she knows she not going to "win"; that energy being better spent on plotting and scheming revenge and sneaky retaliation.
That and I wanted to pose the thought that "maybe she's still a little evil or vindictive or selfish maybe? Maybe she has another plan or backup or something against Starlight?" I wanted it to sit in the reader's mind for just a little while longer before revealing the truth.
I'd say so, though I imagine it'd be easy to learn how to figure out the why once the full perspective is given. Regarding this comment though, I'm not so sure I fully understood its context. Sunset was apologizing for the situation in general and Cozy ending up back in the cage. She could of course just go and let her out, but that would go against Twilight and not help anything.
Yeah. Equestria does seem quite forgiving when you put it that way. But again, I needed Cozy to be booted from the realm without it looking like just another form of punishment-gone-too-far. I wouldn't say she's exiled or banished, per se, given time she probably would be welcomed back just fine, especially if she does some great Equestria-saving deed to earn her reformation. In the meantime, she's given a fresh start under the care of hopefully one of the best mother figures she could have.
BUT... In defense of the story with regards to the comment:
Luna and Discord both served their time (while Discord didn't learn his lesson and went back in). That and the ponies they directly affected are mostly not around, leaving only tales of their doings to be passed down through the generations. One even became a celebrated holiday.
As for Starlight, she only affected the one town that she herself built. There was the whole time traveling and destroying different versions of Equestria thing, but the timeline that prevailed mostly knows nothing of those transgressions save for Twilight and Spike, and whoever else they told, but only as far as the amount of detail that was provided in the retelling.
I imagine there were lots of unwritten/unspoken "rules" of Starlight's "freedom" initially. Living in the castle and going through friendship lessons likely wasn't a choice. Through all that, Starlight spent a great deal of it punishing herself through her low self-esteem as well as not deeming herself worthy of the various joys afforded to other ponies. We don't see it, but it would be relatively safe to assume that in between show episodes and scenes, there's far more that Starlight denied of herself until she finally got over it and accepted her own reformation after finally earning it for herself at the end of Season 6.
All said in my own opinion which I acknowledge may differ from the opinions of others.
Fair enough!
if you ever figure it out, I'd love to be able to further look at this story in that light and improve on future writings.
I have spent a lot of time refining and fleshing out this story from the original >green I had essentially banged out "on the fly". Of the various writing panels I've been to over the years, one of the most consistent pieces of advice throughout all of them was: "Finish your story and move on! Do better next time." As in:
Don't spend all your time on a perpetual work in progress.
There's only so much you can do before it's just not going to get any better, or possibly even start to get worse. It's not part of my main Golly Saga anyway (which I hope to start to get posting here 'soon'). But I know at least one thing that might be contributing to the lack of immersion:
I don't spend a whole lot of time building a solid scene or exploring the characters' motivations.
It's a bad habit of mine to just assume the readers have seen the show and already know the environments and character histories. it IS fanfic, after all. I don't expect non-fans to be reading or understanding it. But also, it's not something I'm good at. Not just in the sense that I just need to read and practice more (or maybe it is and I just don't see it yet). But I see the vast difference between the immersion of my writings and that of others and am both fascinated and dumbfounded at how well they pull it off without boring the reader or seemingly rambling on. I can't describe an empty room in a thousand words. It's an empty room. If I were to try, it'd just be a list of obvious facts; not engaging at all. Maybe I'll get there someday. I'll keep trying.
Thank you so much for reading and reviewing! I appreciate it enormously. It was fun to write and it feels good knowing people are reading and enjoying my efforts.
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I mean, Cozy Glow's entire scheme was based around getting other people to do her dirty work. She didn't like seem like the type to involve herself hooves on, unless she could be relatively sure of the odds. The only time she even fights her enemies directly is with magic.
Plus her first act upon realizing that she had lost the trust of her students in cannon was to run. Not to mention that she hid her ambition of being "Empress" from all but her doomed enemies. She knew that if she came out and claimed the position, it wouldn't go over well.
Her actions here feel very rushed and poorly thought out. Sticking around, and potentially wasting her freedom on such a long shot, doesn't feel like something she would do.
It feels like something that since you brought it up, it should have some elaboration. But then again, maybe I'm just way to used to having my stories explained to me.
I was also looking at it from a critical perspective "what would I say if I had to rate the story?" Felt I should disclose all my issues (good and bad) right up front.
Maybe, but it's MLP. It makes sense for the setting. Plus people underestimate how easy the solutions to some problems really are.
I liked it myself. I get modern audiences want more exposition in their stories, and it may not have been clear for the audience members who haven't struggled with the same issues Starlight did, but I felt her character arc was actually developed quite well throughout her time on the show.
Fair enough. I myself find it hard to gage just what will influence people and how. That's part of why I do think it was a smart move to not show her origins, despite how it comes off.
True. But she also stripped them of their ability to function under false pretenses and kept them in a low resource environment, while using isolation and sleep depravation to keep them in line.
They forgave her remarkably quickly is my point, and she inflected a lot more misery personally, as opposed to Cozy Glow.
To say nothing of how awful Discord is. I assume based on the reactions to him throughout the series, that most of Equis's creatures live in sheer terror of him.
And no one who could do anything about it, cares enough to try.
I mean, at least you are posting stories. That may be more then I get around to doing.
This could be it. I don't need a whole lot of descriptors to enjoy a scene, but even so, when there's hardly any, I notice it.
I don't know how much of this is a factor in this case, but it probably qualifies as at least one of the things that nagged at me.
Well as you can tell, I have a tendency to ramble on too.
I learned to read by struggling through the Hobbit, so if a topic interests me, I can enjoy reading a writer ramble on about it for a good long while.
That being said, I get how hard it is to be confident that said descriptors will land with more regular audiences.
Fair enough. It's a balance, and I'm not sure how well I'd master it.
Not a problem! I enjoyed talking about it with you, and wouldn't mind doing it again, if I come across another one of your stories. Or even here, if you have any follow up questions.
And like I said, for all my issues, I did enjoy the reading of this story quite extensively. I wish you well in your future endeavors.
Shouldn't that be 301,000?
He... he has a point.
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Why yes! Yes it should be. Funny I didn't catch that, but you know what? It kinda makes sense for a Pinkie Pie type character; not to be too dumb to not know how numbers work, but to verbalize something that doesn't make sense, so I think I'll still leave it as is. Good catch though!
You know what, Trixie? I like you.
Well, at least one pony in this technicolor dystopia can still be bothered to give empathy a shot.
Hello! Your story is wonderful! You provided an interesting perspective on the consequences of successfully carrying out Cozy's original plan to steal magic from all of Equestria.
I, of course, doubt that Cozy would have demanded the title of Empress of Friendship when she was exposed: most likely, she would have simply run away, but your view of her madness has its place.
It's a shame there's no sequel following the cliffhanger. Anyway, thanks for the story!
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Thank you so much! I'm glad you enjoyed it.
Yeah, I'm sure that once she realized the actual hassle of ruling, she would have maybe backed out or at least pushed off all of her responsibilities onto other ponies. There was so much more I wanted to do with this one, but it would have just stalled the story or gone off on tangents keeping things from moving along when it was just supposed to be a quick answer to "What if?"
Thanks again! I absolutely love hearing from my readers, all they have to say, the good and the bad.