“There are three things all wise men fear: the sea in storm, a night with no moon, and the anger of a gentle man.” - Patrick Rothfuss
Sunset Shimmer has returned to steal the Element of Magic and set into motion her plan for revenge.
Too bad for her Sunset Shimmer never left Equestria.
Written for A Thousand Words IV, under the Horror category.
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Oh man, that's a brilliant premise for an AU!!!!!!
Although there's no way Chryssi is smart or patient enough to pull it off
Oh dear... Ah well. The human world is better off now anyway. Though this does make me wonder if the Canterlot Wedding happened as we know it did, or not.
Also makes me wonder why Chrysalis hasn't deposed Celestia yet. At this point, who could stop her?
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She could be bluffing
Best of luck in the contest!
Very cool horror AU idea. 5/5
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She could -- in fact, both Sunset and we technically have only her word for any of her supposed accomplishments.
Then again, even if she's being 100% honest, why just throw away a useful tool? As long as Celestia still warms the throne and remains reasonably blissfully unaware, she makes for a nice decoy for the next would-be conqueror to go after and can still do all sorts of princessly stuff that Chrysalis herself doesn't feel like having to take care of herself...probably including both still her fair share of paperwork and that boring old raising and lowering the sun thing.
Too short and all tied-up in its twist for me to do a proper review on it, but that's a brilliant premise, and hits the sweet spot of that sufficing for the 1K length in lieu of much of an actual story, while also being ripe for future expansion should the inspiration for such strike.
And there's plenty mood, notably of the unsettling variety, towards the end to compliment it. Very well done, bud!
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Fun fact: the first draft was only 679 words. I had to expand it to hit 1k.
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I can see how that would have happened at first, especially if one had leaned into Chrysalis getting down to subduing Sunset quicker. But conversely, her added gloating is in character, and the reader is absolutely there for the (unreliable?) narrator details of how she orchestrated her position of power. Thus, the extra length feels natural both in the moment and when looking back on it in terms of structure. Best of both worlds!
Helped, of course, by how strongly the author's passion for this scenario bleeds off the
pagescreen.Holy crap, this was amazing! The potential stories this idea could span!
Damn.
I haven’t read it yet (I don’t usually like overly sad stories) but interesting premise
Tfw you've been replaced by a bug monster for ten years, but Celestia hasn't noticed because she barely paid attention to you when you were still there.
Echoing what others have said about this idea - it would be really cool to see Twilight actually find Celestia's long lost student.
damn... it works.
She couldn't have won even if she tried! As if the changelings wouldn't be able to tell she isn't Chrysalis... And yet, this is an interesting look on how much influence Sunset could have had were it not for her young brash ego.
This is what Chrysalis should have done with royal wedding if she was smart
Damn this is so brilliant and it makes so much sense!
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I can 100% buy that Celly wouldn't even notice that something's off for years, without any changeling mind control magic even
Damn. That's good stuff. Pretty believable actually.
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I mean she didn't notice anything during the wedding, even knowing that the changelings had threatened, so this wouldn't be too far off. Like, they could have replaced Luna and she wouldn't have realized until the moon didn't come up at night...
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Celestia didn't notice that Cadance had been replaced even with her suddenly acting completely out of character 5 feet in front of her.
Ooh, if you were doing the "changeling cocoons make ponies dream their perfect world to keep them docile" headcanon here, it would be really powerful to see Sunset break out of that by a sheer force of will
We are talking about a girl who abandoned the most cozy position in the whole of Equestria and literally hopped dimensions just because she thought she wasn't being given the whole truth
An excellent story. It's always nice when Chrysalis succeeds at something.
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From what I recall of the episode, Celestia didn't actually know Cadence all that well-Twilight was the only one who had spent a lot of time with her before the wedding (Shining doesn't count as he was being manipulated via magic during the episode).
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She knew that SOMETHING threatened. She didn't know it was changelings.
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Do we actually have any canon information on what her original plan even was? Because I'm pretty sure that "Step one, foalnap and impersonate Cadance -- Step two, marry Shining Armor -- Step three, ??? -- Step four, PROFIT!!!" can't have been it even just as a first draft, and it wouldn't wholly surprise me if her original scheme had already been somewhat derailed by unforeseen events even before Twilight got on her case. (Maybe it's just me, but Chrysalis seemed to be giving off some "Hey, I'm villaining by ear here, cut me some slack!" vibes straight away.)
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I'm having a thought of canon Sunset and Chrysalis bonding over how everyone thinks their plans were stupid when they were both improvising after Twilight derailed them.
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Considering Thorax, changelings seemed to actually be warriors first and infiltrators second, so probably attacking Canterlot was always the end goal
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it failed because of chrysalis ego and need to be center of attention, the plan was to gather all equestria leaders in one place, lower the shield and strike with the swarm,taking out any leadership equestria had then take over the enter kingdom with minimal resistance
I have always wondered how Canterlot was alerted to the danger to the kingdom in the first place. Celestia took the threat very seriously, so it had to be a trusted source. But who?
My personal conjecture (and that's really all it is) runs along the lines of Chrysalis having only limited intelligence on her targets to go on while drawing up her initial plan. Not only do the wedding episodes kind of suggest that the changelings are actually pretty new to Equestria at the time, but they're also canonically not the greatest of actors and even the best disguise can only cover for so many gaffes, so it's not unreasonable that even if they'd been around for years already they might still not have any deeply embedded spies among Canterlot high society, let alone in the palace itself.
So, Chrysalis finds out about the ponies having this "alicorn of love" only after Cadence has already been around for years in the background and of course decides that she wants in on that action. Cue one abduction-and-replacement, and because playing the role comes with nice perks it's Chryssie who wants it for herself. Okay, done, time to plot the takeover of the rest of Equestria from there...but, oops, it's only then that she discovers that "she" now has a wedding coming up within days and rather more attention than she immediately expected is all on her right away! She tries to get out of that by arranging the mysterious warning herself (surely the ponies will call off the wedding in the face of danger, right, soft as they are?), but nope, that doesn't work and just results in the groom being called on to put up his trusty shield while the plans go ahead. So it's from then on that she's flying by the seat of her figurative pants and, naturally, isn't at her best.
It's just one fan theory amongst doubtlessly many and there's still room for variations on the theme even right within it, but it seems to explain quite a bit to me.
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I wouldn't it past Celestia to be near completely ignorant of yet another relative's life, adopted or not, but it would make her EXTREMELY negligent not to be able to see Chrysalis being utterly unable to accurately impersontate her since Cadance's official backstory has her being adopted by Celestia as her niece right after her ascension into an alicorn as a child, and I would hope she'd have interacted with Cadance enough to know what her personality is like.
And just like that. The kingdom falls. Straight to the pod next to all the other food.
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Excellent point. Celestia really doesn't come across at all well at various points in FiM.
An interesting what-if. Really enjoyed it.
derpicdn.net/img/view/2018/3/23/1687862.png
Source.
derpicdn.net/img/view/2015/7/14/936898.png
Source.
Edit: ...Or maybe not.
Good story!
I enjoyed reading it.
Small typo:
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There's always one. (Thank you, fixed.)
Clever story line
Well done!
Love it!