AU story.
What if Twilight was unimpressed by Starlight's backstory and decided to stop messing about with taking her out to save her friendships and all of Equestria.
Not for fans of Starlight; just as a fair warning.
Oneshot drabble.
Chapters (2)
cornholio4
Joined 2nd Apr, 2012 ·
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... Yeah. This is why I hate Fix fics. As stupid as Starlight's backstory is, this is not something Twilight would ever do. And no amount of AU nonsense will convince me otherwise.
I feel like some villains are like this. Just petty for no reason than to be petty.
11786043
True, but someone should do it.
I really don't like starlight so I like this, also this could have been better if Luna and Celestia decided this. Keep Twilight innocent. Have her take her in and Celestia and Luna just going off on her before banishing her to somewhere terrible.
Perfection
Luna: goes full Evil and tries to cause a minor end of the world as we know it, because big sister is more popular.
Status: adored almost universally. Some people even like her Nighmare self.
Discord: Lord Of Chaos. Tormented untold number of lives for fun. Brainwashes ponies.
Status: used to be everyone's favorite villain. Adored almost universally after 'reformation'.
Starlight: starts a stupid cult, because 'cutie mark stole her guy friend'. Holds grudge against the Main 6 after they stopped her. Messes with time and space (just like Twilight once did).
Status: people create shitstorms years after the show is over.
Twilight speaks and acts out of character, and that's a big no-no.
Oh, my... We want to have our cake and eat it too. Yeah, making Starlight suffer the consequences of her actions, but sparing Twilight from it is just... gratuitous.
It would be a lot more fun if Cadance interrupted the fight to give Starlight a lecture on what is acceptible and what isn't in a personal, special relationship.
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The same Twilight who condoned contracts of indenture, threatened to cannonade a picket line, and sanctioned multiple executions? I rather think she would.
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Pawning off the decision on Celestia and Luna didn't actually keep Twilight's hands clean in The Ending of the End.
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Luna: attempt to overthrow the government,
Consequences: for her transgressions she was sealed away for a thousand years, and when reformed still had to suffer for the consequences of her actions.
Discord: mentally scarring ponies, mind control, causing chaos and entropy and reality warping.
Consequence: sealed away for thousands of years (plural by the way, more than one) after reforming he didn't really even truly gain the trust or forgiveness of the main six up until the end of the series.
Sombra: creating a dictatorship and enslaving ponies. And using mind control on his victims
Consequences: died four times over
Cozy Glow: nearly caused the end of the world and supposedly a few deaths.
Consequences: sealed away twice. The last time being permanent. Since she's mortal and still able to comprehend everything around her she more than likely died a statue able to comprehend every moment of it.
Starlight: took advantage of mentally distressed ponies, used psychological manipulation on anyone who tried to oppose her, brainwashing, stripping of individuality, practically destroyed the world three times over which definitely led to death and destruction. ( Not including nightmare moons future because there's nothing to show that she was a bad leader in the world seems to function perfectly fine without the Sun.) Forcing spells on other ponies.
Consequences: automatic forgiveness despite sometimes taking it for granted.
For her there's no lasting consequence for actions like the other main antagonists in the story. In fact the story practically bends over backwards to forgive her for her crimes. I mean her track record when you think about it is so bad that the writers had to turn her into a whole different character just to justify reforming her.
That's why people don't like reformed Starlight. She was better off just a villain because at least then she stood out before Cozy Glow did it better.
To the author: When it comes to this story I don't really like it, it feels less like a story and more like your using Twilight as a mouthpiece in order to write down your opinions of starlight which can be boring to read, there are many ways to convey a point within a story, and here I think it was poorly done. having the characters say things and do things out of character in order to push a narrative that you believe in. Isn't very good story writing.
I absolutely can't stand reformed starlight but there are different ways I would have went about writing about it. The story feels more like a lecture on why you hate starlight, instead of a compelling story that paint starlight in a unsympathetic light.
With all that being said I hope you can create a better more fleshed out story that conveys these ideas.
[HEADCANON]. I get headcanoning that Twilight is more powerful as a young alicorn (as I do myself) than Starlight is, but that doesn't necessarily mean she's the most skilled fighter, would necessarily be the best at leveraging her power in an encounter.
But that's just a fancy way of questioning the fact that Twilight, being an OOC mouthpiece in this story, is protected from the consequences of antagonizing an emotionally unstable unicorn such as Starlight at such a time, does not have to deal with her doing something rash (remember, this is the mare who yelled "QUIET"), but instead she just insta-wins, because for some reason, she wouldn't have done this before, despite the stakes.
By that logic, the blood is on Twilight's hooves too for letting it go on this long, even aside from how canon didn't really treat them as continuing to exist as timelines, because she could've ended it, but was consciously deciding not to.
That's not actually a reason. Twilight's just above consequences because you said so, instead of actually showing why things might have gone differently.
This entire deal is a matter of "telling" instead of "showing." And it doesn't do it that well.
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To put it bluntly, Luna's backstory is equally as petty when taken at face value, as far as anything the show explicitly says. She was jealous of Celestia because ponies, not appreciating her night, slept through it. So she turned into Nightmare Moon and tried to kill Celestia/tried to usurp her to rule as a tyrant.
More sympathetic interpretations, like it or not, come down to headcanons. It's reasonable to think that Celestia had her faults in how she dealt with things, but it's not at face value, strictly speaking.
A large part of the disconnect comes in because people won't admit to themselves that they do that for Luna, but for Starlight, they're not inclined to sympathize with her, so they won't dig more into the possible "whys" the story unfolded that way, so it's a matter of confirmation bias.
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Do you really think Celestia really wanted to banish Luna for a thousand years, didn't get saddled with regrets for that long? That if she somehow got her to stop, talked her down, that she wouldn't have likely forgiven her, instead of banishing her anyway? Celestia was crying as she was forced to banish her.
Celestia pretty much instantly forgave her for pulling a repeat attempt after she apologized post-rainbow.
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You do make some good points.
11786397
So you’re saying it comes down to favoritism?
Twilight knew Equestria was screwed if Starlight won but she was holding back nonetheless in the first place? Why??
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Trying to reason with her and I think Twilight didn’t want to go all out fighting a normal unicorn. My headcannon for how Starlight managed to put up as much a fight as she did.
11786419
This STILL makes no sense. If I were Twilight I would beat the crap out of Starlight if it meant saving the entire world. Why would one hold back??
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Luna was pretty much possessed by a dark force that turned her into Nightmare Moon if you take the words of Lauren Faust and the comics into account.
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Superheroes hold back in their fights and it’s like if Superman thought that someone could be talked out of doing what they were doing. I admit that doesn’t happen often in media.
Sorry just want to give how I view this.
11786419
You're writing an AU where Twilight is this vindictive, so as to break her horn, rip off her cutie mark, and leave her to die in a barren wasteland.
Do you think for a nanosecond this is actually sensible reasoning? She saw the repeated apocalypses/bad presents as a problem, the timelines as conceptualized here as problems, yet she didn't decide to curb-stomp her ASAP?
She's just as guilty as Starlight at that point. She could've subdued her instantly and gradually tried to talk it out with Starlight in a jail cell, instead of letting her cause more damned timelines.
11786423
And where is this stated in the actual show? It always treats it as entirely Luna's fault.
11786043
Can you please give examples of what you are talking about? Plus was the executions from the end of the end since I don’t think stone counts if that’s what they are talking about?
Just wondering please.
11786427
Got it and I now kind of see the logic of this wasteland ending being a bit too far. The horn thing wasn’t twilight’s intentions; just the by product of starlight being slammed at such force into a boulder.
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When I refer to "when reformed still had to suffer for the consequences of her actions.."
I'm talking about the tantabus and the ramifications that comes with being sealed away for a thousand years like not being able to understand the current state of the world, proper mannerisms of today, or her subjects.
I agree though that her backstory is just as Petty as Starlights. But that has nothing to do with the point I was trying to make, there are no consequences for starlight's actions.
Sorry for the ramble
That's what makes most of the other characters that I mentioned more "interesting" and more "likeable". Even though some of those characters are the scum of the Earth and have done scummy things they're not let off the hook for it. in the show they're either shown as the enemy and in the wrong and receive consequences accordingly or judged for their actions.
But when it comes to starlight she gets special treatment. That can turn a lot of people off to the character. it's not a matter of popularity. It's just a matter of poor character writing and a lack of compelling motivation.
I was always bothered by Starlight's backstory since it didn't seem anywhere near bad enough to justify her later actions. I remember reading and liking "That's It?" and I'm sorry to hear it was deleted. That story had Twilight similarly unimpressed by Starlight's "tragic" backstory, and she resolved it by talking to Starlight and making her see that what had happened wasn't really so bad and that there were more positive ways of dealing with the situation. It was well-done.
The Twilight in this story just doesn't feel right because she's so out of character. Twilight would not break a unicorn's horn, steal her cutie mark, and leave her stranded in a world where her only possible fate is a slow death from exposure/starvation. This just feels like an indulgence in punishment for a character the author hates instead of an honest alternate take on the events of the show.
11786443
I admit that the death world is excessive but the horn breaking wasn’t intentional; it was the force of the blast against the boulder
11786443
In all honesty, to butcher a sacred cow, ...That's It was not sensibly in-character for Twilight, or Starlight. S5!Starlight's much more likely to double down and lash out if you're going in treating her like that then and there. Twilight had to use empathy to stop her from ripping the scroll, talk to Starlight on her level.
When you look at the contrast, Starlight had to be very uncharacteristically passive for that scenario to "work." It's like insulting someone with a loaded gun, but they just don't possess any agency for some reason.
The goal is to get them to stop. It's not to risk them lashing out because you're pushing buttons that would realistically antagonize them, and Twilight would be realistically aware of that, having been on the receiving end of Starlight telling her to shut up in the premiere, and her being willing to use violence when pushed hard enough. Starlight spent however long seething and planning. How do you know she doesn't have dark magic up her sleeve as a desperate act (which she could've, since she got Star Swirl's spell out of the Restricted Area to modify it), if she's backed into a corner hard enough/pissed off enough?
It's much more sensible if you get Starlight talked down and then talk it out with her later over lunch, on why that ever seemed reasonable in the first place, when you're actually reasonably sure you won't just make the mare with a history of emotional instability try harder to kill you for invalidating her perspective, in the heat of the moment. It realistically makes it easier for Starlight to think she has nothing to lose by doubling down under those circumstances.
But that kind of thing isn't emotionally pleasing enough to do, instead of having Twilight nigh-suicidally handle it that way, so it gets praised oh-so-much for preying on the audience's wish fulfillment desires in such a way, and credit where it's due: it worked; a lot of people were willing to overlook how just OOC that actually was, if it gave them cheap emotional catharsis on their misgivings.
Still a shame that it seems to have gotten nuked from the internet...?11786477
Don’t think starlight would have gone for dark power since in her own mind she convinced herself that she’s still the hero in this situation and I think it serves well for a Reason You Suck speech to tear down your excuses since in this case Starlight I don’t believe should have been able to actually take on twilight if they were fighting for real
Trying to talk down opponents is good but circumstances where even in the face of evidence that their actions will end all there is you should see that it’s not any good reasoning with them
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I think I’ve heard about that.
11786429
You replied to Mystic Sunrise instead of zimmerwald.
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Again, you're baselessly clinging to that headcanon that "oh she totes could've stomped her at any time." It's an ad hoc justification for Twilight to be shielded from the realistic consequences of being a sanctimoniously vindictive bitch in this story, where her approach to having an opponent be rivaling her in power or like, for example, effectively 75% as powerful, but more skilled in actually applying her knowledge for combat while Twilight, being a scholar first, has issues paying attention at all times (getting hit once because she was talking in place with her eyes closed) and hitting the intended target, is to further antagonize her.
Not everyone can be talked down, it is true, but immediately antagonizing someone after they emotionally open up to you, just to tear them down is a self-fulfilling prophecy. They're being treated as irredeemable, so of course they're not getting redeemed.
What's actually being "solved" here? If there's the slightest chance that Twilight can viably see (from her perspective) in reasoning with them, if she thinks she has something to work with, then she's going to try that, so the "fix" is that Twilight, self-proclaimed Princess of Friendship Extraordinaire, doesn't even try, even halfheartedly, when given a potentially viable opportunity, however remote it might be, in favor of carrying out a shallow power fantasy where she's Completely Justified In Exacting "Justice" TM.
She doesn't feel any visceral horror from accidentally breaking Starlight's horn and recoil in horrified guilt upon seeing that much blood to try to fix it (the threat's solved, so GG, take her back to your timeline to decide your next move), for an action committed in a moment of weakness, so she doubles down and rips off her cutie mark, and leaves her to die/rot on a dead world, being perfectly fine with that.
To be frank, Twilight's actions here wouldn't be OOC for a sadistic villain like, say, Chrysalis. We have: "she was toying with her the whole time," we have "feels absolutely no sympathy in punishing her so severely," and we have "leave her to die alone," and the only rationale she has is "she's irredeemably bad so she deserves to suffer because I said so." And no, the Punisher isn't a role model, either.
Why would this Twilight have forgiven Discord after he betrayed them all, when he had absolutely no excuse for his actions? Why would she have let Trixie waltz out of town after she decided to seek out the Alicorn Amulet because she decided it was Twilight's fault for "upstaging" her, despite doing absolutely nothing to her in Boast Busters, which is even more twisted reasoning than Starlight seeking revenge after the village?
11786772
Thanks and I admit that I should have twilight reacted to breaking the horn but I don’t want to not portray as starlight as the unforgivable self righteous villain I see her and I think twilight would here understand that Trixie was corrupted by the amulet
Sorry if you think she was being too vindictive here but I stand by my justification of her holding back against a weaker foe she thinks at first is just misguided and could be talked down since it’s a more soft superhero like approach since they hold their punches until they see that the time not to had arrived
Plus I am planning on an alternate ending to the stuck in a dead timeline thing
Plus this was also fuelled by me being ina strong believer in a trope on tvtropes called Freudian Excuse is No Excuse and while I give leeway to certain situation s and characters depending o how tragic their circumstances: I strongly applies this to starlight and I didn’t want to have twilight pretend that her opponent was anything but
Hope that this can be a friendly discussion since I admit that this fic is flawed and the execution is lacking
11786284
Can you please give examples of what you are talking about? Plus was the executions from the end of the end since I don’t think stone counts if that’s what they are talking about?
Just wondering please.
I don’t even have to read this to know I’ll despise this fic. I saw the comments and that’s enough for me to share the same view as everyone else criticizing this.
It’s a shame too, because I normally enjoy your Total Drama stories a lot from FanFiction.net
11786853
Thanks though and I completely understand; different opinions and I have an opposite view of Starlight from you. I like other characters I have seen bashed and I am a big Team Cap fan in McU which is the minority compared to the opposite on ao3. I understand if this fic is not for you.
11786853
Can I ask please if you have a fanfic account and if you regularly review my stories? Just wondering.
11786859
I don’t normally review your stories but you might know me as Cody Fanatic. I saw some of your Gwourtney works, and despite hating the pairing, I did like them..
11786853
Remembered you look at an older story I did based on the movie where I was more fair to this and I don’t have any ideas or desire to call out in her compared to characters from other fandoms but I just wanted this out of my system
I understand people do like her even if I cannot and I know what it’s like to like characters that others hate on when you think it’s unfair
11786861
Got it thanks and I know this might be harder as Starlight kind of gets it easy compared to how I feel about Cody but I do know that he doesn’t deserve being subjected to Sierra which I did anyway for a storyline in my latest one so there’s that….
11786864
Yeah, I liked that fic much better. You were much more controlled with your bias towards Starlight to where it seemed like something that would happen.
11786866
Yeah, I understand why Cody’s getting more flack recently. The egregious harem fanfics didn’t help his case.
11786871
Thanks and I do like those kinds of stories for certain characters but I do wonder why Cody has this big popularity in this fandom to warrant this
But hope we can agree to disagree and I admit that I can not let my bias overtake this even if there is a small number of characters I utterly refuse to be lenient in from certain fandoms
11786429
Condoning contracts of indenture: in Trade Ya, Twilight was prepared to rule in favor of Teddie Safari and uphold her contract with Rainbow Dash for a year of Fluttershy's labor. That she ultimately ruled in Rainbow Dash's favor and let her (and Fluttershy) out of the contract was down to factors other than a moral disgust at Rainbow's right to consign Fluttershy to servitude.
Threatening to cannonade a picket line: in The Summer Sun Setback, the unicorn firework artists went on strike (for racist reasons), and Twilight ultimately forced them back to work by having Pinkie Pie parade her party cannon in front of their picket line.
Multiple executions: not just of the Trio, but of Sombra as well. And unlike the Trio's, she actually did Sombra's herself.
11786975
Thanks
Interesting ending
Nice!
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11786975
I got the alternate ending up so if you have time and interest can you please tell me what you think?
This is the ending I wanted. And twilight is more in character in this one. Keep up the good work
Better than leaving Starlight to die in an alternate timeline, that’s for sure.
11795962
Thanks very much
11795930
It’s good. I loved seeing starlight angry.
Equestris is still doomed. Chrysalis wins in the Season 6 finale. Let alone anything else.
11796161
The domino effect could be Twilight more alert by the time that she appears
The first ending was better.