Canterlot High closes for two weeks after a school shooting occurs. When the school reopens, Twilight Sparkle struggles with her indifference to the incident and her inability to adjust to the tense atmosphere.
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- Member Since 27th Dec, 2018
- offline last seen April 16th
Saint
waiting patiently for the singularity
Saint
Joined 27th Dec, 2018 ·
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Damn, this is very complicated. Both sides are right and wrong. They both have the right to how they feel, but they are wrong in the way they try to show or explain it. Plus, I feel like the moral compass of some of the character’s are confusing.
i'm with the twilights on this.
11399203
I can't help but feel that both Twilights are vulnerable to the biases of whatever books or sources she has access to. Not that I feel they really researched in depth or put any thought into the divisive topic of gun control before making their positions known. Pony Twilight just put absolute faith in the methods and opinions of an alternate version of her that turned into a multiverse destroying demon.
Princess Twilight failed to understand that she isn't just a go-to for magic emergencies. She missed that she, the Princess of Friendship, was being sought out to help with a friendship emergency.
If she's completely indifferent, then she literally could not care less.
So why did you call the story "COULD care less"?
When I clicked on this, I honestly expected something sensationalist or just plain weird, but this is well done and I think, respectful. AJ and Pinkie had the responses that most fit their characters, though I wish Twilight was allowed to make her point across without the others preventing her. Everyone responds to tragedies in different ways, and they should have tried to understand that for some people, going into logic mode and trying to work out what happened analytically is their way of dealing with it.
11399213
Sunset also failed to remember that Pony Twilight Sparkle lives in a world where murder is something that almost never happens. Of course, with how emotionally unstable Sunset was, she couldn't remember that.
Also, this story implies that the next magical disaster that happens in the human world, they are done.
No Elements of Harmony. No protection. Humans are screwed.
I feel like this chapter ends in a way that allows for more chapters, like Principal Celestia and Vice-Principal Luna getting the news about this situation, and then they try to speak to them and try to make a bridge again. Something like that.
11399237
Probably a typo that will be fixed later (or never, who knows? Maybe it was intentional.)
Man. This is complicated.
Everyone has their own way to deal with situations like this. No one is in the wrong in this scenario. I think this is something that only time can heal. With time, they may reunite again, start over, etc.
Well, if the next magical incident doesn't happen before, because if that happens, goodbye human world.
I liked the story. It was interesting to see the different PoVs.
Yes I wish the number of guns available to the public could be shrunk but I also know that everything that sci twi said was the exact truth . I don't like it but until we find a better way this is the way things are.
Sci-Twi is autistic, psychopathic or South African, though maybe she just didn't know the people who died - she transferred from Crystal Prep after all, so maybe it's hard for her to feel any bond with these people or something. Also, it quickly turns into a discussion on guns featuring both some classic 'Murican pro-gun copes I'm too European to understand and anti-gun reeing amplified to the point of strawmanning. Kinda not what people usually read ponyfics for.
Yeah, there's something wrong with Sci-Twi here. Not because she doesn't have the same opinion as her friends, but because she feels nothing. Thats not normal. Even the most indifferent person would have the social understanding and graces to feel uncomfortable or awkward about the school shooting, not just treat it like a nothing burger.
11399373
I think the story had a point, but lost it by using such a grim and politically charged thing like a school shooting.
11399398
Yeah, even if it was something totally inapppropriate like, "too bad they didn't shoot that bitch who gave me a wedgie". I mean, the guy apparently pulled off a double Columbine and she's not even mildly interested in that? Morbid fascination would be a more interesting take and would make other characters just as uncomfortable as indifference.
11399213
Still, the twiggles are right.
Hey, in botswana was an earthquake, dozends if not hundreds dead.
Do you grieve them? No? Why not? Why do you grieve for the few who
got shot in a school? Did you know any of them? Why should you care?
And no, i will not be manipulated into caring for somebody who i do
not know just because somebody else maybe knew of them inpassing
and now expects me to share their grief.
I will respect them grieving, but i will not be bogged down with that.
Princess Twilight could have been a bit more compassionate because
of her role as the princess of friendship and a bit more empathic to
Sunset . . maybe . . but still, this does not mean that she has to do
anything else that Sunset suddenly expects in her irrational anger
over something she has no stake in at all.
This story flies in the face of all the character development and empathy both Twilights have experienced. Both have grown to care and value friendship and wouldn't shrug it off for experiments and research, or just because they disagree on stuff. The whole point of Twilight's character development is caring for others. Twilight is not an emotional vegetable, in Equestria she reaches out and cares for every creature she can in the name of friendship. And you're saying she'd be indifferent if they died in the human world? I believe she would look at it in a logical approach, but not without emotion. This is one of the most unrealistic takes on Twilight and her friends that I've seen.
11399432
Vegetable is the correct term here tbh. I'd expect this from Chrysalis more tbh, 'blue and orange insect morality' and all that
This is literally psycho behavior.
It would be Really cool to se how a sequel to this would work
I was thinking about this story over lunch, and it reminded me of the Anon-A-Miss canon christmas special/comic. The concept of the girls having to deal with the aftermath of a school shooting has a lot of potential. But this execution of it...
Okay, this story does portray a lot of the hopelessness and deep political divides I see in the American political scene. Everyone is so dug into their position that there is no real hope of change. Nuance is pointless. Middle ground does not exist. And without hope, why bother talking to people who disagree with you when you can just ghost them and live in your own political bubble.
But I would have preferred our girls to have remained friends even as they have differences in opinion and perhaps even find some common ground to make the world a better place. That story though would require quite a bit of research, acknowledgement of history, and being able to write multiple different viewpoints on a contraversal topic.
11399452
Maybe. but with so many people in the world being murdered for the stupidest of reasons, it's hard not to feel numb to it all after a while.
Take the case of Mark Herring for example. He was a 60 year old man, subjected to a swatting orchestrated by a bunch of teenagers, and died of a heart attack. Why did they report a fake murder to police and get them sent to his address? Because they got mad at him when he wouldn't give up his Tennessee twitter handle so they could have it for themselves. They basically murdered him for telling them no online.
11399398
I can't really blame Sci-Twi for how she feels in this story. She comes off -to me at least- as emotionally stunted due to an upbringing that emphasized academic excellence above all else. Crystal Prep would've driven sympathy for her fellow students right out of her. She doesn't come from the same background and it's unreasonable to expect her to feel the same way as everyone else. Frankly I wouldn't be surprised if Cinch ingrained in her the notion that fellow students are just obstacles and stepping stones on the way to greatness. The human psyche can only withstand so much of an onslaught before it starts to sink in. Even if she knew it was wrong, lessons learned in the formative years are hard to shake.
11399432
Honestly, this whole story feels like an excuse to present the same tired argument we've heard a million times before. "Gun are bad, we need more government to save us from ourselves, and you're a bad person if you think otherwise!"
11399490
You know what, I'll give you that. There's a lot of studies showing how private schools essentially create emotionally stunted people with barely a shred of empathy, utterly focused on achievements with little regard to anyone else.
11399490
Honestly I was getting the vibe that this story was written from the pro-gun side. The message I saw was, "Guns exist. People kill people. Life sucks. Accept it and move on." The arguments from the anti-gun side were particularly weak in this story. But then, so were the arguments from the pro-gun side.
11399398
Socoipthy.
Sci-Twi has a few signs of being a high-functioning sociopath. Including being rather self-centered and lacking the ability to relate to others. Both of which are on full display here. She's also utterly amoral and reckless, including casually disregarding others safety, when she wants to learn something.
Pony-Twi? She's just stupid, sheltered, spoiled, self-centered, and naive to a painful degree. Oh and let's not forget hypocritical. What makes things worse is that when she does get her muzzle shoved in those, she only fixes it for that specific pony/place/time.
11399482
Agreed.
11399297
It's intentional.
Also, thanks everyone for the comments (even if half of them are people arguing), didn't expect anyone would read this honestly.
11399507
I've been wanting to do a story for a good while relating to such subjects and discussions. But I don't want any of the characters to come off feeling like a mouthpiece for certain viewpoints. Figuring out how to do each character right on a subject they don't normally address is complicated, especially if you want to keep them somewhat gray as they acknowledge each side raises certain valid points in some regards but not in others.
So, I clicked on this story with a sense of morbid curiosity, expecting a sensationalist trollfic with little to no nuance and no intelligent discussion to be had whatsoever. Maybe that was your intention, maybe not.
Regardless, what I got after reading it was something a bit different. I don't know if I liked it or not, but I respect your willingness to address such a divisive issue and present a somewhat socially popular but entirely socially unacceptable perspective that occurs when tragedies occur. We do depersonalize as a means of coping with tragedy. Sometimes, we legitimately don't care, because to care about every single life lost in tragedy would very quickly make life impossible to live.
The problem I personally have--which is a biased problem framed by my own tastes--is using that perspective within the context of pony-fanfiction. To me, the benefit of confronting real-world, human issues, via a lens of ponyfic, is to do so by casting a mirror on our own behaviour and contrasting it with that of our pony characters. It can be inspiring, and productive, to provide an analogue to our struggles, but then still show how a fundamentally optimistic and well-intentioned group would react to it. How does their reaction differ from that of us humans? What can we learn from how they do so?
Which is something I don't feel like this fic did a sufficient job of doing, and I feel like most of the hatred you're getting would have been avoided had you made more of an attempt to do so. It casts Twilight in a light that becomes difficult to reconcile with her character growth in the show. It casts her friends as unwilling to exercise forgiveness or understanding with those they moralistically disagree with. And it leaves me wondering what the point of calling attention to a heated, divisive issue is when you're not actually showing any moral lesson or compromise.
Long-winded and pretentious comment, I know, just had some thoughts after reading and I figured you as the author would like to hear them. Take care.
11399562
Sociopath sci-twi it’s kinda hard to see at least in shows context but still a really cool idea, and shelter princess twilight that I can TOTALLY believe
11399576
Well I have to say reading was a really odd experience (but not a bad one) Do you have any sequels planned for this story? Or do you wanna keep it as a one shot?
11399373
What dose being South Africa have to do with this? I’m confused
11399713
Elon Musk.
Guys a poster child for what happens when an emotionally stunted kid with a single talent grows up. You get a narcissist with delusions of genius in all areas and a god complex.
And you would be surprised how many people you know would qualify as sociopaths. Like a lot of disorders it falls on a range with most having just enough social skills to fool the average person.
Sci-Twi's big tell (at least in the handful of synopsis and clips I browsed) was her utter lack of hesitation when Cinch had her do surveillance at the Friendship Games. Never once did she stop to ask if what she was doing was right. It wasn't until her research then life was in danger did she balk.
11399747
Sometimes I wonder if being a sociopath is a necessary defense against the utter insanity the world seems to run on. How long can the human mind withstand a constant stream of tragedies and suffering before becoming utterly numb to it all, or going completely to pieces?
11399747
I have been reading Temple Grandin’s new book and it looks like Elon Musk might actually be on the autism spectrum rather than being a sociopath (assuming that he is being honest about his diagnosis).
This is also how I see Twilight Sparkle (or more specifically Sci-Twi). I have to admit, though, that the possibility of a sociopathic Sci-Twi also occurred to me when I saw the Friendship Games movie until almost the end of the movie. By the end of the movie the idea of Sci-Twi being somewhere on the autism spectrum seemed more likely.
I have not read this story yet, but I plan to right after I post this comment.
11399713
11399747
The South Africans I know tend to be rather casual about danger. Like, the guy talks about armed people trying to steal his car on his way to work and he talks about it in a tone as casual as me talking about cycling down the street in the town I used to live in and seeing that someone poured red paint all over the Che Guevara's monument.
Though I have to admit that I like that Elon Musk interpretation. Yeah, this guy is definitely not right in the head and neither is Sci-Twi here.
Twilight almost seems to be a sociopath in this story, but not quite. A sociopath would not typically be afraid of death (from what I have read about sociopathy).
Cozy Glow is a classic example of what a sociopath is like. Cozy Glow only showed fear when she could see that she was turning to stone and she could not do anything to prevent it. At best, sociopaths are only afraid of imminent danger.
Also, if Twilight was actually a sociopath it seems likely to me that she would pretend to be upset about what happened (possibly even in an over the top way) in order to have more breakfasts like the ones on her birthday, extra gifts from her other relatives, extra attention, etc. and yet the possibility of doing this never seemed to occur to her. Therefore, it seems to me that she likely has some other condition that has not been diagnosed yet (and might not be for some time (even if she starts seeing a therapist)). Some neurological conditions (for example) caused by damage (often due to stroke or other injury) around the time of birth can be more difficult to diagnose than one might think…
11399432
Or maybe Twilight would be like this. She had no problem with using Pinkie Pie as a diversion while she stole the pearl from Queen Novo in the My Little Pony Movie. What happened to her character growth in that movie?
It seems to me that her motivation was essentially “the ends justify the means”. Maybe that’s why she didn’t notice anything off about Cozy Glow when she was her “right hoof mare”. She wouldn’t notice anything off about Cozy Glow if she is at least a bit like her deep down (even if she chooses to hide it for various reasons).
11399213
If Princess Twilight was responding to a Friendship Emergency why didn’t it occur to her to have the rest of the Elements of Harmony meet her at the castle? It seems to me that Princess Twilight didn’t see this as a real friendship emergency. This is probably why Sunset is likely no longer friends with either Twilight Sparkle at the end of this story.
11400279
11400320
Sociopathy, autism, undiagnosed third disorder, etc. it all boils down to Twilight basically being the designated villain of the story simply because she doesn't feel what those around her are feeling.
It basically reads as an attempt at shaming anything that isn't groupthink and saying dissenting opinions are bad and should be subjected to shunning because it's not what the majority thinks/feels/believes.
11400659
And the up and down doots agree with your assessment.
11400329
You are thinking of psychopaths, those are the manipulative ones.
Sociopaths just don't have empathy, but still tend to be normal people.
This was a really brave take, and it is really making me think. Thank you and keep up the good work!
11399639
Your thoughts on this story are interesting, because I had almost the opposite reaction. I saw the characters as reflections of the behaviors that do happen in our world to this type of tragedy; and how it can tear even the strongest and best friends apart.
Many commenters seem to think there is something wrong with Sci-Twi. There is not. Many people have very loose emotional bonds to others, being highly self-focused or unaffected by what is devastating to others.
I count myself as one of those people. I view the world in larger terms, policies and “the good of the many”. I’ve learned this can seem uncaring or cruel to others, and I manage my words carefully around thoE who don’t know me. My desire to be a productive force to fixing these problems was to volunteer to be an EMT (a paramedic, for those not in the US), and to serve my local ambulance company for a decade. In that charged environment, being able to detach oneself from the emotions is useful. Having someone on your crew who can view a person as just a bag of meat that needs fixing allows for objective, good decisions to be made.
Thanks to the author for a thoughtful treatment of this topic, and shame on those who have downvoted the story.
11399747
“Guys a poster child for what happens when an emotionally stunted kid with a single talent grows up. You get a narcissist with delusions of genius in all areas and a god complex.”
So… creating two of the most successful companies in this century? Revolutionizing both the space industry and the electric car market?
When some historian in 2101 puts together a list of “most influential people in the 21st century”, Musk is going to be on it. It will be no exaggeration to say that he will have had a significant role in mitigating climate change by advancing acceptance of electric cars; and of making space affordable enough to allow commercial development. If we put people on the Moon in this decade or Mars by 2050, a large portion of the credit will be due to him.
11407845
Yeah. Again, I fully acknowledge that what I was 'critiquing' was really an explanation of my own personal preferences with pony fic, and how I personally felt I could've enjoyed it more. I didn't intend to say it like it was a definite 'flaw' on the author's part, more just an explanation of my own thoughts reading it.
We all look for different things out of fiction, and I think stories that inspire that discussion succeed at least in some respect.
Well, that was depressing as hell. I liked it, but I’m not so sure about some of the actions taken by the characters and the ending feels like everything is unresolved. I also felt it may have been a bit too political at times, but that’s perhaps just unavoidable with a story talking about school shootings.
I am glad you wrote it though, it’s interesting and you don’t see something like this often. I may actually write something like this in the future examining all the characters and their psyche.
11399484
Anon-a-miss? What made you think of that?
11424070
This is one of those stories with great but unrealized potential.
11424198
Oh ok. I understand that. I see those a lot.
You can has review!
I don't know if there's much I could say to this... good story but felt awkward in moments, not in the way I would say was awkward in a funny way but felt a little just off, I don't know exactly how to say it, its a story that I feel could of had so much great potential of how it delved into trauma, this story is respectful to this kind of tragedy, I just in my opinion. Think it could of been handled just a little more, don't know the problem of the story that makes me feel this way it just has that small itch of a problem that feels wrong, and now I'm rambling on about this, so anyways still its a good story about the feeling of detachment.