What if Rainbow Dash was born a griffon, and Twilight an alicorn princess? A seemingly small change to two, but with significant ramifications.
Twilight lost her crown over her response to an incident involving griffons' predatory nature, but now she'll have to trust one of them, on top of braving an Everfree full of creatures even more happy to eat ponies, to defeat Nightmare Moon...and it won't be quite the picnic it was in the show.
Expect content akin to No Second Prances (depressed Trixie Manticore mouth dive episode), i.e. somewhat heavy drama/topics and ponies being gobbled up.
This is an entry for Choices: A Species Change Contest.
Chapters (3)
Proper cover art is pending (may take a while...vectoring a griffon is hard and it's the holidays). For now, movie Twilight certainly conveys a similar attitude to how ex-princess Twilight acts.
Oh boy. Celestia ain't happy 😁.
I wanna read this story.
11429723
Come to think of it, a prequel would be quite interesting. It would take at least a few weeks to get together, but definitely something I'll try to get done before February.
interesting
Oooh a bit more aggressive than usual.
I think it was a good thing canon Twilight wasn't born a princess, the royalty might've gotten to her head.
.................
Im going to believe thats a lie because then there would be tensens between ponies and griffons
WHAT DID YOU DO?😠
Hopefully she's nice
.
NVM
Wow harsh
Black Snooty?
11429728
Tho
Why did you choose to turn Rainbow into a griffon and not an OC griffin?
11429815
I could perhaps try to work in hints that ponies outside the mane 6 aren't entirely fine with Gilda and Dash partying amongst them, but it'd be a bit tricky. Twilight's friends all are in positions where they would trust in Moondancer and Dash preventing future incidents.
11429837
As far as the contest goes, the species swaps have to matter for creating a choice, so Rainbow couldn't be replaced by a random griffon.
*glances at the video game 'threads of fate' then back to this...then back to that then this again*
why does this remind me of a video game that has nothing in common with it...
11429858
I haven't said about replacing her
Sadness that Applejack is no longer the Element of Honesty,
11429900
Never heard of the game, but from a brief read, maybe it's to do with the style of how the drama unfolds in dialog?
11429903
Really, Spike is about the only one in the friend group less honest than her, so consider this a correction. She'd be the element of loyalty in the story actually if Spike wasn't around, but I thought it'd be kind of funny to have Dash temporarily get rid of AJ and Twilight doesn't even notice until the end; it certainly makes for some good moments with Twilight and Spike.
And don't worry, she'd still go on pretty much every adventure with them because she's a close friend and has strong hooves.
you got anger problems
And in fact that she took away your title instead of sternly talking or punishment, I guess you did many bad things multiple times?
wait
Where's Applejack and Pinkie?
WHY ARE YOU LAUGHING,!? SHE JUST GOT EATEN!!!!
😨😨😨😨😨😨😨😨😨😨😨😨
THE WHAT? And Fluttershy doesn't want to be a star or something, she wants to be a veterinan
YOU WHAT!? Why do you keep eating ponies!?
a BABY dragon is going to fight bad guys.
11430126
Well, storming an embassy uninvited and breaking the furniture while making threats is a bit of a big problem. I should probably make it clearer that things weren't just over some broken desk.
11430168
Pinkie's not meant to be taken seriously here. It's a comedic reverse of how in some cases (notably the first Equestria Girls) she's used to deliver exposition she shouldn't know.
11430179
You mean in regards to him being an element? AJ (and probably Gilda realistically after a certain point) will be on the adventures to beat things up, while Spike is more for support with firebreath and a direct line to the princesses (The Cutie Map would be a lot easier with a way to call in the royal guards after finding out Glimmer's evil...)
So this is a story that has potential, but I think is held back by being somewhat all over the place tonally. It feels like it's a chaotic blend of comedy, seriousness, parody, and soft vore fic all rolled into one, and I found while reading that having all of those elements in one pot doesn't blend together as well as was clearly hoped, as some of those elements just openly contradict with each other. For example, when the story tries to do serious moments, it's hard to take it seriously enough to appreciate it, because the rest of the story is so wild and comedic, it gives you no motivation to want to take anything seriously enough.
If it had instead just focused on being one or two of those elements, like if it had just been the seriousness and the soft vore fic,* or if it had just been the comedy and the parody,** then I genuinely think you really would've had a winner there.
But all of these elements at once? I mean, it still entertained as evidenced by the fact I still read to the end, but, again, I think the story is held back by the fact all of those traits presented together ended up conflicting with each other more often than they complemented each other. Still, good effort I suppose.
*(Honestly, while vore isn't really my thing, I actually kinda would've been more interested in a much more serious take on that whole Twilight/Dash and their whole coming to terms that griffons eat ponies but not all ponies are chill with that dynamic, and more seriously explored the implications and trials such a premise would show. Just throwing that out there.)
**(Conversely, if leaning in on just the comedy and parody aspects, the story being about, say, how Twilight's all paranoid about any griffon just waiting to gobble them up at the slightest chance to such a comically unreasonable amount while Rainbow's playing the straight-mare and trying to prove to her, perhaps fruitlessly, that's not actually the case at all could've been plenty of fun too.)
11430348
I'm aware it didn't really blend perfectly. This started out conceptually as a dark but silly comedy where Twilight was unintentionally gaslit about Dash until the very end, but it ran into some problems, most notably lacking a consequential choice on Twilight's part (necessary for the contest). An entirely different tonal direction after coming up with plot elements tends to cause some problems, and on top of that, there's the inherent tonal clash between the show's very nonserious first episode (and its characters) and Twilight having to work past acting out over a past trauma. I will see if there's anything I can do with minor dialog improvements to at least make the characters act a little less like everything's fine.
A good beginning so far, with some interesting changes. Nice to see Moondancer making an appearance.
Yeah. The story idea has potential, that's for certain and, yeah, I could see where this Twilight would have issues with griffons, given certain events in Canterlot (the fact that Rainbow and Gilda ate three of her friends would certainly be more than enough to understandably tick her off, even if she used the brutality on the wrong griffons AND got in trouble for it). But, on the more positive side, at least Rainbow/Gloomy fessed up AND Twilight gained a better understanding. The element assignments makes sense too.
11430302
Yeah, I could also still see AJ and Gilda being in on the bad guy beatdowns too. And, in addition to what you pointed out, Starlight's "Sameness Spell" would have pretty much no effect on a dragon and griffons (no Cutie Marks to mess with), so a third of the group (Spike, Gloomy/Rainbow and Gilda [the last of whom, along with AJ, is strictly additional muscle for more dangerous missions in this universe]) would be immune to that trick, making things more difficult for Starlight.
Okay, overall not bad. I enjoyed reading this different take on the series premiere. :)
11429910
Oh that's a relief. Applejack isn't my Best Pony, but she certainly is in my Top 3.
This probably needs a fetish tag.
11434938
Warning tags can't be put on E-rated fics; to my understanding, this is because they're for "this particular thing that causes a T or M rating is common in, or a theme of, the story", and thus don't apply to E-rated themes/common things.
Makes me wonder what Twilight did to become an alicorn here, or if she was born one. And Celestia is being a hypocrite here. Ponies were murdered, and she punished Twilight for having a perfectly acceptable reaction to it.
Oh yes. Real smart sunass.
11437812
She was born one. As for Celestia and Twilight, do realize the magnitude of what she did, and the position it put Equestria in politically; under slightly different conditions, a war would've started. Of course, the prequel fic I've got brewing would perhaps make it more clear.
"No Second Prances" is a letdown. I'll give the story a read, but if you go the same way, and try to redeem a character that claimed to think of friends SECOND, and BEATING someone - FISRT... Well, this is not a story for me.
11439702
Rest assured, I am no fan of how the show excused Trixie's awful behavior (I could go on a huge rant about more than just that episode...); that comparison is only to prepare readers to see a confluence of intense emotions and, more importantly, that beasts who could swallow the ponies actually will for once (some people get touchy about this).
I reworded the warning a bit, is that clearer?
11440091
As long as you don't redeem characters that blew their second chances(ALicorn Amulet was Trixie's SECOND coming, where I hoped she would learn some humility) - I will have no problem. It also impresses me, how people can defend Starlight and Trixie, and blame Twilight, despite her actually being correct. Do you want a link to a story, where an author just balmes Twilight? I can link it.
11440098
There's some interesting technicalities about that, but I think you'll be pleasantly surprised on how the characters are handled here. And no, no fics necessary, I'm fully aware of the problems with how later FiM tended to handle characters reforming.
Right so this is just vore with plot, got it, I'm out.
Edit: also eating ponies is just kind of accepted? Rainbow eats three of Twilight's friends and isn't even put in jail? The hell is this?
11453092
Dash hasn't intentionally killed anypony. She was prevented from spitting out Minuette by Gilda. Gilda however not only made Dash kill Minuette, but was the one who ate Lemon Hearts and Twinkleshine.
In the real world, Gilda'd be serving years in prison even with a plea agreement, with Dash not far behind, but this is pony society, where even literal war criminals can get slaps on the wrist, so her punishment was pretty minor* once it was clear she was willing to reform.
*: By our standards, not pony standards (imprisonment in their society is pretty rare). I'm not 100% sure on what punishment to write into the prequel, but my current idea would be something like a year of strictly-monitored probation and being on-call for community service (so anything Mayor Mare wants done in that year, Gilda has to do it, up to 7 hours of work each day, up to 5 days a week, minimum livable wage), as well as having to pay damages to the families and show an effort to make friends with selected ponies around town. As an added complexity, they probably would've banished her from Equestria for safety reasons, but the Griffon Empire didn't want her or Dash back and was incensed over Twilight's overreaction, and a plea agreement had to be done because Gilda insisted Lemon Hearts and Twinkleshine agreed to things, and no witnesses actually contradicted that.
11429723
Same
11440098
I would like a link to that story please
11454267
This is why our way of punishment is better than there’s.
And basically Celestia doesn’t care if three of her citizens died and basically just said don’t do it again.
You see this is why many people like Luna since at least she’s willing to lay down the law and deliver proper punishment for killing and eating her citizens.
And do I even what to know what there military is like?
11462004
https://www.fimfiction.net/story/327456/her-life-was-in-your-hooves
My comments were deleted there. Just a heads up.