It has been two years since the Great War began. The relentless advance of the Changeling army, while not stopped, has slowed considerably. With the balance of the forces in a delicate equilibrium, Princess Twilight Sparkle is looking for an answer. A technology hitherto quite unimaginable. A technology that could potentially save millions of Pony lives, along with countless other creatures. And the price?
A single friendship.
This is an Equestria at War story, a mod for the grand strategy game Hearts of Iron 4.
This is my very unofficial entry for the 2022 EaW write-off. Though I could only start it in the dying days of the contest and as such it was never feasible to make it in time, I still wanted to finish it. Taking things slowly seems to be a hallmark of the contest anyway :D
I must thank my Great friend Scribbly for editing my story. He is a great guy and deserves every bit of success he achieves.
I believe a certain fish pone would love to be friends her.
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Source.
Interesting idea.
I expected she was a filly which got drained by merciless Changelings who sucked out her very soul.
That might be something to convince the scientist.
Edit. It seems I wasn't that wrong.
Twilight, you are scaring me...
Good story!
I enjoyed reading it.
Suggestion: Consider splitting stories as big as this into several smaller chapters. 15k words are a lot and are likely to scare potential readers away.
3x5k or even 5x3k would be much easier to digest.
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I assume a certain deer would also be quite interested in her findings
Of all the things she said or done that is what's scaring you? :D Well, I guess, you probably just chose that sentence to illustrate everything else she's done up to that point. Fair enough. Anyhow, Twilight is supposed to be scary, because this is a scary place to live, and an even scarier one to lead a country in. Twilight gazed into the abyss, and it gazed back. For what's that worth she really tried to keep the veil on the world as long as she could to protect her friend, but she was way too stubborn and way too intelligent to be dealt with the usual methods.
The unusual methods on the other hand... are somewhat questionable.
I'm very happy that you liked my story, even more so that you took your time to write a comment about telling me. As to your suggestion about breaking the story up, while that sounds great on paper, I'm unsure as to where to put in the breaks. This story (not unlike my other stories) is one continuos dialogue between two characters in the same location, within a very confined time frame putting breaks anywhere I think would feel very forced.
Whoaaa nelly.
Describing how I felt during and after reading this is a tough one. This story has really superb dialogue-writing that I could really only wish of. It's a very cleverly crafted story that I felt basically every paragraph had meticulous effort put in it. It explores a lot of interesting ideas, both in terms of lore and the story itself.
Twilight's character is remarkable - in the sense that it's eerie how well she's written to display the fact that the war has changed her for the worse and made her despicable, making me feel a little sick in my throat (in a good way). Fluttershy isn't so OOC all things considered - despite what the author's note says. It really presents her well as being jaded and it also shows a transformation of her own.
So yeah, the half hour that I spent reading this pic ended up hitting me like a truck driven by a crack addict and the dealer is just down the road. This is, mind you, a compliment.
The only thing I will complain about however is an inconsistency. Which is, as follows:
"That is the burden of being a subpar writer. You muck things up." - from the Authors note.
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Well yeah, the entire scene you helped me rewrite intended to address the biggest problem with the story, Fs's OOC nature. The fact that you think she is less OOC now, means my efforts may not have been in vain.
Twilight... yeah she is a very strange character. The strangest I've ever written in all honestly. I love to look into the abyss with my stories, just put my characters through hell, and see how they come out on the other side. But this... when I was writing the whipping scene I vividly remember at one point I had to get up and just leave the keyboard. Which is not the crazy part, the crazy part is that then later I had to convince myself is that, what I was doing was in fact the right scene. So in a very real sense, I had go through a very similar journey as Twilight herself. Which is horrifying but luckily while our path may be parallel mine does not run as deep down as hers.
As to whether she is a despicable being, I don't know. She has done despicable things, that is without question, and her motivations were not squeaky clean either. (I'd argue, had her motivation been pure she wouldn't have had the stomach to stoop down low enough to achieve her goals) But, her results, supposedly save a lot of lives. Or Lifes.
I reckon that is a question we all have to wrangle with by ourselves.
By the way thanks for the kind words again, I'll make sure I'll read some of your works.